
Class. 
BooL 



U- 



)$^7^ 



<7 



* . 



GOLD-FOIL 



HAMMERED EEOM POPULAR PROVERBS. 



BY 



TIMOTHY TITCOMB, W*j 

AUTHOR OF "LETTERS TO THE TOIWG," 






* Proverbs are the daughters of dailv experience.'* 

Dutch Proverb. 



< 







SEVENTEENTH EDITION 



>^3auofE- 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBXEE, 124 GBA2JT STREET. 
1862, 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

CHAELES SCEIBNEE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United StatesN for the South* 
era District of New York. % 



Hit ' 



John F. Tkow, 
Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotype?, 

46, 43 & 50 Greene Street, 
Between Grand & Broome, New Yosi, 



Wrasflfc 




fiilfftl 



PREFACE. 



THE grass that grows upon the lawn elects and 
drinks from the juices of the earth the ele- 
ments that compose its structure ; but if the lawn 
be cropped year after year, and have no return of 
the materials removed, it will cease to thrive. A 
wise husbandry will spread upon its surface the re- 
sults of the life that has been taken away, and these 
will furnish its most healthful nourishment. So the 
\ ital truths, relating to the common life of man, are 
elected and drawn from soils containing innumera- 
ble ingredients that may not be assimilated. Many 
of these ingredients, good and bad, are furnished by 



4 Preface. 

the schools and by the professional ruind ; and it 
may legitimately be the work of a layman to take 
the results of the life that has been lived — the 
truths that have been verified and vitalized by hu- 
man experience — and give them again to the soil 
that has produced them. With the records of pop- 
ular experience in my hand, as they are embodied 
in popular proverbs, I aim to do this work in this 
book. 

THE AUTHOR, 

Springfield, Mass., 1859. 







$JW 




An Exordial Essay., 



The Infallible Book. 



Patience . 



II. 



III. 



IY. 



19 



81 



Perfect Liberty 43 



Trust and "What Comes of it.... 

VI. 



Tee Ideal Christ., 



55 



67 



VII. 



Providence , 79 

VIII. 
Does Sensuality Pay? 91 

IX. 



The "Way to Grow Old., 



102 



6 Contents. 



x. 

PAC-B 

Almsgiving 113 

XI. 

The Loye of what is Ours 124 

XII. 
The Power of Circumstances 136 

XIII. 
Anvils and Hammers 148 

xiy. 
Every Man has his Place 160 

XY. 
Indolence and Industry 171 

XVI. 
j/IThe Sins of our Neighbors 183 

XVH. 
i/The Canonization of the Yicious 194 

XVIII. 
Social Classification 205 

XIX. 
The Preservation of Character 215 

xx. 
wTices of Imagination 226 

XXI. 

Questions above Reason 237 



Contents. 


7 


XXII. 

Public and Priyate Life 


PA.GE 

249 


xxm. 
Home 


260 


XXIV. 
Learning and Wisdom 


272 


XXY. 
Receiving and Doing 


284 


XXYI. 
The Secret op Popularity 


297 


xxvn. 
The Lord's Business 


309 


XXYIII. 
The Great Mystery 


5U>7 






GOLD-FOIL. 



AN EXORDIAL ESSAY. 



44 Cold broth hot again, that loved I never ; 
Old love renewed again, that loved I ever." 

" Get thy spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send thee flax." 



FOR the general public, I have written a preface, 
that the aims and character of my book may be 
comprehended at a glance, as it is lifted from the shelf 
of the bookseller ; but to those who read the book, I 
have something more that I wish to say by way of 
introduction 

It is not for the brilliant brace of initial sermons 
that we still admire the man whom we love to call 
u our minister." The old love must be renewed again, 
from Sabbath to Sabbath, from month to month, and 
from year to year, by new exhibitions of his power 
and new demonstrations of his faculty to feed the mo 
]* 



10 Gold-Foil. 

tives of a large and luxuriant life within our souls. If 
he fail in this — if his power flinch through laziness, or 
flag through languor — and he resort to the too common 
process of heating again the old broth, his productions 
will grow insipid, and our hungering natures will turn 
uneasily to other sources for refreshment. It is not for 
the fresh cheek, the full lip, the fair forehead, the 
parted sweeps of sunny hair, and the girlish charm of 
form and features, that we love the wives who have 
walked hand in hand with us for years, but for new 
graces, opening each morning like flowers in the par- 
terre, their predecessors having accomplished their 
beautiful mission and gone to seed. Old love renewed 
again, through new motives to love, is certainly a thing 
lovely in itself, and desirable by all whose ambition and 
happiness it is to sit supreme in a single heart, or to 
hold an honorable place in the affections of the 
people. 

A few months ago, the pen that traces these lines 
commenced a series of letters to the young. The let- 
ters accumulated, and grew into a book ; and this 
book, with honest aims and modest pretensions, has a 
place to-day in many thousand homes, while it has been 
read by hundreds of thousands of men and women in 
every part of the country. More and better than this, 
it has become an inspiring, moving and directing power 
in a great aggregate of young life. I say this with 



An Exordial Effay. 11 

that kind of gladness and gratitude which admits of 
little pride. I say it because it has been said to me — 
revealed tc me in letters brimming with thankfulness 
and overflowing with friendliness ; expressed to me in 
silent pressures of the hand — pressures so full of mean- 
ing that I involuntarily looked at my palm to see if a 
jewel had not been left in it ; uttered to me by eyes 
full of interest and pleasure ; told to me in plain and 
homely words in the presence of tears that came un- 
bidden, like so many angels sliding silently out of 
heaven, to vouch for their honesty. To say that all 
this makes me happy, would not be to say all that I 
feel. I account the honor of occupying a pure place 
in the popular heart — of being welcomed in God's name 
into the affectionate confidence of those for whom life 
has high meanings and high issues — of being recognized 
as among the beneficent forces of society — the greatest 
honor to be worked for and won under the stars. So 
much for that which is past, and that which is. 

And now, I would have the old love renewed. I 
would come to the hearts to which the letters have 
given me access with another gift — with food for appe- 
tites quickened and natures craving further inspiration. 
I would bring new thoughts to be incorporated into 
individual and social life, which shall strengthen their 
vital processes, and add to their growth. I would con- 
tinue and perpetuate the communion of my own with 



12 Gold-Foil. 



the popular heart. To do this successfully, I know 
that 1 must draw directly upon the world's experience, 
and upon the results of my own individual thinking, 
acting, living. I know that no truth can be uttered by 
a soul that has not realized it in some way with hope 
to be heard. Preceptive wisdom that has not been 
vivified by life has in itself no affinity for life. 

It is a blessed thing that the heart has an instinct 
which tells it without fail who has the right to teach 
it. The stricken mother, sitting by the side of the life- 
less form of her first-born, will hear unmoved the words 
of consolation and the persuasions to resignation which 
are urged by one who has not suffered, even though he 
eloquently draw motives from the highest heaven ; 
while the silent pressure of her hand by some humble 
creature who has hidden her treasure under the daisies, 
will inspire her with calmness and strength. The world 
cares little for theorists and theories, — little for schools 
and schoolmen, — little for any thing a man has to utter 
that has not previously been distilled in the alembic of 
his life. It is the life in literature that acts upon life. 
The pilgrim who knocks at the door of the human 
heart with gloved hands and attire borrowed for the 
occasion, will meet with tardy welcome and sorry en- 
tertainment ; but he who comes with shoes worn and 
dusty with the w r alk upon life's highway — with face 
bronzed by fierce suns and muscles knit by conflict 



An Exordial Eflay. 13 

with the evils of the passage, will find abundant en- 
trance and hospitable service. 

The machinery which I propose to adopt for my 
purpose is simple enough. It is the habit of the mind 
to condense into diminutive, agreeable and striking 
forms the results of experience and observation in all 
the departments of life. As the carbon, disengaged by 
fire in its multitudinous offices, crystallizes into a dia- 
mond that flashes fire from every facet, and bears at 
every angle the solvent power of the mother flame ; so 
great clouds of truth are evolved by human experience, 
which are crystallized at last into proverbs, that flash 
with the lights of history, and illuminate the darkness 
which rests upon the track of the future. The proverbs 
of a nation furnish the ind'ex to its spirit and the re- 
sults of its civilization. As this spirit was kind or un- 
kind — as this civilization was Christian or unchristian 
— are the proverbs valuable or worthless to us. I 
know of no more unworthy sentiments, no more dan- 
gerous heresies, and no more mischievous lies than are 
to be found among the proverbs that have received 
currency, and a permanent record in the world ; but 
here and there among the ignoble paste shine noble 
gems, and these, as they may seem worthy, I propose 
to use as textual titles for these new essays of mine. I 
choose them because they are the offspring of experi- 
ence — because they are instinct with blood and breath 



14 Gold-Foil. 



and vitality. They have no likeness to the unverified 
deductions of reason. They are not propositions, con- 
ceived in the understanding and addressed to life, but 
propositions born of life itself, and addressed to the 
heart. They were not conceived in the minds of the 
great few, but they sprang from the life of the people. 
I give the people their own. 

Precisely what these essays of mine are to be, I 
cannot tell, because I do not know. I only know that 
there is an inexhaustible realm of practical truth around 
me waiting for revelation. There are multitudinous 
thoughts, now trailing upon the ground, that point 
their tendrils tipped with instinct toward this pen of 
mine, striving to reach and twine themselves around it 
that they may be lifted into the sunlight of popular 
recognition. I have got my spindle and my distaff 
ready — my pen and mind — never doubting for an in- 
stant that God will send me flax. Toward the soul 
which places itself in the attitude of reception, all 
things flow. For such a soul are all good gifts fash- 
ioned in heaven. The sun shines for it ; the birds sing 
for it ; up toward it the flowers swing their censers 
and waft their odors. Into it in golden streams flows 
the beauty of star-sprinkled rivers. The roar of waters 
and the plash of waterfalls give healthful pulse to its 
atmosphere. Into its open windows come the notes of 
human joy and human woe in the triumphs and the 



An Exordial Eflay. 15 

struggles of the passing time. Past its open door 
Memory leads the long procession of its precious dead, 
who look in with sweet faces and whispers of peace. 
In front of it, Imagination marshals the forces of the 
future, and it thrills with the bugle-blast and trembles 
with the drum-beat of the thundering host. For per- 
ception were all things made, and to the door of per- 
ception all things tend ; so that the soul that throws 
itself wide open to all that is made for it shall find 
itself full. 

When a soul thus receptive places itself in the atti- 
tude of expression, it has but to move its lips and the 
words will flow. The mind that has become a treasure 
house of truth and beauty speaks a world into existence 
with every utterance. Expression is its instinct and its 
necessity. This expression may not always seek the 
shape of language, but it w ill assert itself in some form. 
The patriot reveals the secret of his soul when he 
gladly dies for his country, and" sacrifices his life upon 
the altar of his inspiration. The Sister of Mercy tells 
the story of her love and her devotion, unseen and un- 
heard of the world, in midnight ministrations to the 
comfort of the sick and the dying. The modest mother 
expresses the love and life she has received from God 
and the things of God in the tutelage of the young 
spirits born of her, and the creation of a bright and 
graceful home for them. "We give what we have re- 



16 Gold-Foil. 



ceived — that which is within us will out of us. Expres- 
sion is the necessity of possession. 

The form which expression takes depends upon 
natural tendencies and aptitudes, and habits imposed 
by circumstances and opportunities. I suppose that to 
every man who writes a • ^ook, or is in the habit of 
writing books, there comes at the conclusion of each 
effort a sense of exhaustion. Then, through days, and 
weeks, and months, he walks contentedly, taking in 
new food — without method, without design — any thing, 
every thing — regaling his sensibilities, ministering to his 
appetite for knowledge, exercising his sympathies, ab- 
sorbing greedily all the influences evolved by the life 
around him, till there steals upon him, insensibly, the 
desire for another instalment of expression in the 
habitual way. He finds himself organizing the truth 
he has received into harmonious and striking forms. 
He is arrested in fits of abstraction into which he has 
fallen unawares. He will not be content until the pen 
is in his hand, and his mind has applied itself to the 
work demanded by its condition. 

But about the flax that God sends to such a man : 
this would all seem to be pulled from the earth, softened 
by sun and rain, and broken and hackled by natural 
processes. True : and yet I imagine there are few 
thinking minds in the world that are not aware of a 
double process by which expression is arrived at — one 



An Exordial Effay. 17 

entirely involuntary, lying deep down in the conscious- 
ness, and operated independently of volition ; and 
another, voluntary, lying upon the surface, and mostly 
engaged in the invention of forms — dependent for ma- 
terials upon the process beneath it. This is the reason 
why millions of men undertake to do what they never 
can do. The involuntary — the divine process — work- 
ing profoundly in their natures, throws up materials 
which they have no power to clothe in 'language, or 
present in forms of art which the mind will recognize 
as appropriate. Such men are misled. .They strive to 
write essays, and fail. They struggle to produce 
poems, but cannot. They have abundant materials for 
essays and epics in them, but they are incapable of com- 
bining and expressing them. Many men and women 
spend their lives in unsuccessful efforts to spin the flax 
God sends them upon a wheel they can never use. 
The trouble with these people is that they have made 
a mistake in their spindle. It is with the human mind 
as with the plant. Deep down under ground there is a 
process of selection going on, by which salts and juices 
are drawn by a million roots and rootlets into the stem 
— drawn from masses of mould and sand and gravel — 
and sent upward to be acted upon again — flax sent up 
by God to be spun. Every tree and shrub is a distaff 
for holding, and every twig a spindle for spinning the 
material with which God invests it. One twig, by a 



18 Gold-Foil. 



power of its own, will make an apple, another a peach, 
another a pear, another will spin through long weeks 
upon a round, green bud, and then weave into it star- 
beams and moonbeams and sunbeams, and burst into a 
rose. The man full of juices and rich with life, who 
was made simply to bear Roxbury Russets, and yet un- 
dertakes to bear roses or magnolia blossoms, will always 
fail. Blessed is 'that man who knows his own distaff, 
and has found his own spindle. 

It is with the conviction that this pen which I hold 
is my particular spindle that I begin upon the flax God 
sends me, through a process entirely independent of my 
will, and undertake to spin a series of essays, kind 
readers, for you. That I may be able to contribute a 
worthy thread to the warp of your lives, or at least to 
furnish a portion of their woof— contributing to their 
substance, if not to their beauty — is my warmest wish 
and my most earnest prayer. 



n. 



THE INFALLIBLE BOOK. 



" He that leaves Certainty and sticks to Chance, 
When fools pipe, he may dance." 

1 Better ride an ass that carries ns than a horse that throws us." 



WE live in the future. Even the happiness of the 
present is made up mostly of that delightful 
discontent -which the hope of better things inspires. 
We lie all our invalid lives by the side of our Bethesda, 
watching the uneasy quicksand upon its bottom, in its 
silvery eruptions, and listening to the murmuring gurgle 
of the retiring streamlet, yet waiting evermore for the 
angel to come and stir the waters that we may be blest. 
The angel comes, and the waters are stirred, but not 
for us ; and, though others grasp the blessing which we 
may not, we look for the angel still, and in this sweet 
looking fall happily asleep at last, and waken possibly 
in the angel's arms ; — possibly, where ? As the future 



20 



Gold-Foil. 



holds our happiness and hopes, so does it also hold our 
fears and our apprehensions ; and the mind is on a con- 
stant outlook for that upon which it can best rely to 
avoid the evils which it dreads, and secure the good 
which it desires. It reaches in all directions with its 
hands, and tries in all directions with its feet, for a solid 
basis of calculation and expectation, with reference to 
its future pleasure and pain. As the future is inscru- 
table, it reads carefully the lessons of experience, 
studies the nature and tendency of things having rela- 
tion to its life, erects theories and institutes schemes of 
good, and bends its energies to the achievement and 
security of protection, necessary ministry, and all de- 
sirable possession. All this it does with reference to 
the few years of mortal life which remain to it. 

But there is a God above the soul, and there is 
something within it which prophesies of another life. 
The body is to die ; so much is certain. What lies be- 
yond ? . No one who passes the charmed boundary 
comes back to tell. The imagination visits the realm 
of shadows — sent out from some window of the soul 
over life's restless waters — -but wings its way wearily 
back with no olive leaf in its beak as a token of emerg- 
ing life beyond the closely-bending horizon. The 
great sun comes and goes in heaven, yet breathes no 
secret of the ethereal wildernesses. The crescent moon 
cleaves her nightly passage across the upper deep, but 



The Infallible Book. 21 



tosses overboard no message, and displays no signals. 
The sentinel stars challenge each other as they walk 
their nightly rounds, but we catch no syllable of the 
countersign which gives passage to the heavenly camp. 
Shut in ! Shut in ! Between this life and the other 
life there is a great gulf fixed, across which neither eye 
nor foot can travel. The gentle friend whose eyes we 
closed in their last sleep long years ago, died with rap- 
ture in her wonder-stricken eyes, a smile of ineffable 
joy upon her lips, and hands folded over a triumphant 
heart; but her lips were past speech, and intimated 
nothing of the vision that enthralled her. 

So, in the lack of all demonstration, we have but 
one resort, and that is to faith. Faith must build a 
bridge for us ; faith must weave wings for us ; and that 
faith must find materials for its fabrics brought from 
the other side of the gulf, and not produced on this. 
We cannot enter the spirit land to explore, record, and 
report ; so all we get must be revealed to us. "We may 
talk never so loudly of the intimations of the immor- 
tality within us, of the light of reason and of conscience, 
of the godlike human soul ; we may speculate with mar- 
vellous ingenuity upon the future development and des- 
tiny of powers that seem angelic even to ourselves, but 
it is all conjecture — it is all as unsubstantial as the 
dreams that haunt our slumbers. Unless God teach us 
of the things of God, or delegate some occupant of a 



22 



Gold-Foil. 



heavenly seat to tell us of the things of heaven and of 
the destiny of the great family of intelligences to which 
we belong, we shall know nothing upon these subjects. 
Briefly, all knowledge concerning the future condition 
of men must come from the other world to this, and 
not through any agency initiated in this. We are thus 
helplessly, inevitably, left to revelation. "We cannot 
help ourselves. We may flutter and flounder under 
this conviction as much as we choose, but fluttering 
and floundering avail nothing. If the fact that we are 
immortal be not revealed to us by a Being who knows, 
and cannot lie ; if the way to make our immortality a 
happy one be not pointed out to us by one who has the 
right to direct, then are we in darkness that may be 
felt — then are we afloat upon a wide sea, without rud- 
der or compass. 

Now, there can be no faith in any revelations con- 
cerning the future state, and no faith in the things re- 
vealed, without a thorough conviction on the part of 
the soul exercising it that the source from which these 
revelations come is infallible. They must also be au- 
thoritative, and fully received as such into the convic- 
tions, or they are nothing. A revelation from any 
source, touching whose authority the soul admits a 
doubt, is absolutely valueless as an inspirer of faith. 
It is for this reason that all the unsettled mind in 
Christendom is drifting either towards an infallible 



The Infallible Book. 23 

Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible atheism — 
infallible because denying every thing — shutting God 
and the future out of existence. With many the drift- 
ing process is done with, and the journey is completed 
in rest and satisfaction. Many can say, with the Bible 
upon the heart — " This is God's word. It is my rule 
of life. I believe in the God and the immortality which 
it reveals. I trust in it, and am happy." Others, edu- 
cated to believe in an infallible church, or struggling 
through frightful years of skepticism, have taken refuge 
in Rome, and tied up to the element of infalhbility 
which they imagine they find there. Others still are 
either practically or professedly atheists and infidels, 
discarding Bible and church, and resting, or trying to 
rest, in the infallibility of a broad negation. 

It is not for me to prove the infalhbility of the Bible, 
in part or in whole. I have not undertaken the task 
in this article, nor do I propose to undertake it in any 
future article. Neither do I undertake to show that an 
infallible church cannot be made out of fallible mate- 
rials. Still less do I undertake to prove the existence 
of a God and a future life. I take it for granted that 
the question of a future life is one of great interest to 
all minds, and the question of its happiness or misery, 
of the greatest, to most. I assume that the Bible com- 
municates a correct knowledge of God and human 
duty and destiny, or that nothing whatever is known 



24 Gold-Foil. 



of them. I assert that in the degree in which this 
Bible has been received, as a whole and in particulars, 
as the infallible rule of faith and duty, have those thus 
receiving it found rest, peace, fearlessness of the future, 
and hope of everlasting happiness. I affirm that in the 
degree in which men have wandered away from this 
Bible into skepticism, or taken it into their hands to 
cheapen the character of its inspiration — to cut, and cull, 
and criticize — have they made themselves and others 
unhappy. All that has been done to weaken the foun- 
dation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has 
been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation, 
and at the cost of human happiness. 

The mind, in such a matter as this, seeks for some- 
thing reliable, and will have it. If it cannot find it, it 
will make it. If it will not accept the Bible as such, it 
will make an infallible church, or deify and enthrone 
the human reason. One of the most interesting devel- 
opments of modern spiritualism is the illustration which 
it gives us of this fact. Tired with the puerile and 
contradictory revelations which it gets, or supposes it 
gets, from the spirit world, it has, in multitudes of in- 
stances, sunk into a cold rationalism, or thrown itself, 
disgusted and discouraged, upon the bosom of the 
Catholic Church, by a very necessity. Now there is 
no logical tendency of spiritualism into systems so di- 
verse as these It is the instinctive leap of a soul, mis- 



The Infallible Book. 25 

led by its intellect, yet true to its wants, out of a jargon 
of demoniacal whims into something which has, or as- 
sumes to have, infallibility. The rush of atheists and 
infidels into spiritualism — atheists and infidels practical 
and theoretical — is the rush of a class of minds that 
find it hard to believe without demonstration, and seek 
among these necromantic manifestations for something 
better than its reason, and more readily evident to it 
than the revelations of the Bible. 

I say that toward an infallible Bible, or an infallible 
church, or an atheism and infidelity growing out of the 
deification of the human reason, the mind of all unset- 
tled Christendom is drifting, by a necessity of its na- 
ture. It will have something upon which it can rely. 
It cannot abide uncertainty ; it must have faith. His- 
tory will teach us something of the different results 
thrown up by these three currents of life. It is hardly 
necessary to allude to the paralysis of spiritual life that 
befalls a soul which places itself in the keeping of a 
church — which surrenders itself to the mortifications 
and irrational impositions of an irresponsible hierarchy. 
The abuses, outrages, corruptions, wars, and awful im- 
morahties that have grown out of a church like this, 
are matters which almost monopolize the pages of his- 
tory, and sufficiently prove that it has its basis in error 
and its authority in arrogant assumption. When 
the people of France pulled down both God and 



26 Gold-Foil. 



the church, and set up reason in their . place, all 
the infernal elements of human nature held their 
brief high carnival. That one terrific experiment 
should be enough for a thousand worlds, through 
countless years. 

So, cut off in all other directions, we come back to 
the Bible. If that be not authoritative, nothing is. If 
that be not infallible, as a revelation from God of his 
own character, the nature of the coming life, and the 
relations of this life to it, then nothing is infallible, and 
the faith, without which earth is a cheat and life a sorry- 
jest, is impossible. What do we find to be the fruits 
of a living, practical faith in an infallible Bible ? The 
most prominent, or that which appears most prominent, 
in the eyes of the world, is a missionary spirit in contra- 
distinction to a proselyting spirit. The really missionary 
work of the world has been done in the past, and is 
now being effected, by those who receive the Bible un- 
mutilated as God's word to men. The noblest heroisms 
that illustrate the history of the race have their inspira- 
tion in implicit faith in the Bible. Men in whom life 
was fresh and strong, and women who were the imper- 
sonations of gentleness and delicacy, have died for it 
the martyr's death of fire, singing until the red-tongued 
flames licked up their breath. Out of it have come all 
pure moralities. Forth from it have sprung all sweet 
charities. It has been the motive power of regenera- 



The Infallible Book. 27 

tion and. reformation to millions of men. It has com- 
forted the humble, consoled the mourning, sustained 
the suffering, and given trust and triumph to the dying. 
The wise old man has fallen asleep with it folded to 
his breast. The simple cottager has used it for his dy- 
ing pillow ; and even the innocent child has breathed 
his last happy sigh with his fingers between its promise- 
freighted leaves. 

Suppose it could be proved that this Bible is all a 
fable : in what would the demonstration benefit us ? 
It is all we have. If it do not infallibly teach us the 
truth concerning the future life, and instruct us in the 
way of making that future life a happy one, then there 
is nothing that does. Suppose it could be proved that 
parts of this Bible are fabulous, and that those portions 
which are not so w r ere inspired in a kind of general 
way, like the writings of all genius which is both great 
and good : who would be the better or the happier for 
it ? I believe it to be demonstrable that no greater 
calamity could befall the human race than either the 
general loosening up, or the entire destruction, of faith 
in the Bible, even were the whole of it a cunning in- 
vention of the brain of man. Better an ass that car- 
ries us than a horse that throws us. Better faith in a 
fable which inspires to good deeds, conducts our powers 
to noble ends, makes us loving, gentle, and heroic, eradi- 
cates our selfishness, establishes within us the principle 



28 



Gold-Foil. 



of benevolence, and enables us to meet death with 
equanimity if not with triumph, in the hope of a glori- 
ous resurrection and a happy immortality, than the 
skepticism of a kingly reason, which only needs to be 
carried to its legitimate issues to bestialize the human 
race, and drape the earth in the blackness of Tar- 
tarus. 

So, I say, let us stick to the Bible — the whole of it 
— from Genesis to Revelation. When the apostle, 
standing on the heights of inspiration, places the hand 
of the second Adam in the hand of the first — the Adam 
of Genesis — I believe there was such an Adam, and 
that the apostle believed it, and knew it. When I see 
Christianity emerging naturally and logically from a 
religion of types and ordinances, I believe that that 
religion is a portion of the system of divine truth. 
When Christ, standing in the Temple, declares that 
the Scriptures testify of him, I believe they do thus 
testify, and that it is right that they be bound up with 
the Gospels and the Epistles as an essential portion of 
the grand whole. I find the writers of the New Testa- 
ment constantly referring to the Old, and the Old 
prophesying, or recording the preparation for, the 
events described in the New. There is much that I 
do not understand, and no little that seems incredible ; 
but I see no leaf that I have either the right or the 
wish to tear out and cast away. I receive it as, in it- 



The Infallible Book. 29 

self, independent of my reason and my knowledge, an 
authentic, inspired, and harmonious whole. I pin my 
faith to it, and rely upon it as the foundation of my 
own hope and the hope of the world. 

Rational minds will ask for no higher proof that the 
Bible, in its entirety, is reliable as a revelation from 
God, than the nature of the faith which is based upon 
it, and the results of that faith — the noblest phenomena 
of human experience — the consummate fruitage of hu- 
man civilization. But were it otherwise, the Bible is 
our best wealth. Were it widely, wildly otherwise, 
Heaven withhold the hand that would touch it destruc- 
tively ! Crazy Kate, who parted with her sailor boy 
at the garden gate half a century ago, believes he will 
come back to her again, carries still in her withered 
bosom the keepsake which he gave her, and decks her 
silvery hair and her little room with flowers, to give 
him fitting welcome. This hope is her all. In this she 
lives ; and in this, fallacious though it be, resides all 
the significance of her life. As she stands upon the 
rock worn smooth by her constant feet, and gazes 
hopefully across the saddening sea into the yellow sun- 
set, to catch a glimpse of the long-expected sail, would 
it not be inhuman to plunder her of the keepsake and 
toss it into the waves, or tear from her the hope that 
fills with blood and breath the long perished object of 
her idolatry, and swells the phantom sails that are 



30 



Gold-Foil. 



winging him to her bosom ? Whether true or false, 
the Bible is our all — the one regenerative, redemptive 
agency in the world — the only word that even sounds 
as if it came from the other side of the wave. If we 
lose it, we are lost. 




III. 



PATIENCE. 

" The world was not made in a minute." 

" Every thing comes in time to him who can wait." 

" For all one's early rising it dawns none the sooner." 

" What ripens fast does not last," or, " soon ripe, soon rotten.'' 



IF there be one attribute of the Deity which aston- 
ishes me more than another, it is the attribute 
of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of 
the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a 
hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been 
wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leis- 
ure ; and I bless God for that geology which gives me 
a key to the patience in which the creative process was 
effected. Man has but a brief history. A line of nine- 
teen old men, centenarians, would, if they were to join 
hands, clasp the hand of Christ ; and the sixtieth of 
such a line would tell us that his name is Adam, and 



32 Gold-Foil. 



that he does not know who his mother was. Yet this 
wonderful earth, unquestionably constructed with ref- 
erence to the accommodation of our race, was begun 
so long ago that none but fools undertake to reckon its 
age by the measurement of years. Ah ! what baths of 
fire and floods of water ; what earthquakes, eruptions, 
upheavals, and storms ; what rise and fall of vegetable 
and animal dispensations ; what melting and moulding 
and combining of elements, have been patiently gone 
through with, to fit up this dwelling-place of man ! 
When I look back upon the misty surface of the dimly 
retiring ages — the smoking track over which the train 
of creative change has swept — it fades until the sky of 
the past eternity shuts down upon the vision ; and I 
only know that far beyond that point — infinitely far — 
that train commenced its progress, and that, even then, 
God only opened his hand to give flight to a thought 
that He had held imprisoned from eternity ! 

But the old rocks tell us that there was a time 
when animal life began — rude and rudimentary ; typi- 
cal and prophetic, the geologists say. We may call it 
typical and prophetic, if we choose ; and, in a sense, it 
undoubtedly is so. But, to me, all these forms of 
animal life are simply patient studies of man. There 
seem to be parts of man in every thing that went before 
him. As I find in the studio of the artist who has com- 
pleted a great picture, studies of heads and hands, and 



Patience. 



33 



limbs and scenes which the picture embodies — con- 
venient prisons of fleeting ideas — experiments in com- 
position and effect — so do I find in the records of pre- 
Adamic life only a succession of studies having refer- 
ence to the great picture of humanity. God was in no 
haste to get the world ready for man, and in no haste 
to make him. There was coal to lay up in exhaustless 
storehouses. There were continents to be upheaved, 
seas to chain, river-channels to carve. There was an 
infinite variety of germs to be invented and made in 
heaven, a soil to be prepared for their reception on the 
•arth's surface, and a broadcast sowing to be effected. 
What infinite detail ! What intimate arrangement of 
special laws that should not clash with one another ! 
How could the Creator wait so long to see the being 
for whom all this pains-taking preparation was in 
progress ? 

Well, when the process was at last completed ; 
when the marvellously beautiful but diminutive form 
of Adam walked out of God's thought into the morning 
sunlight of Eden — walked through flowers and odors, 
and among animals that licked his hand and gambolled 
around him unscared ; when the impalpable forms of 
angels were thick around him in an atmosphere uneasy 
with its burden of vitality, how did the Creator regard 
him — the object of all this patient working and wait- 
ing ? It was what we should call "a great success." 



34 Gold-Foil. 



It was " very popular " with the observing host. The 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy ; but God did not even say that it was 
" very good ; " He only " saw " that it was so. No 
ruffle of exultation swept over the bosom of that sub- 
lime patience, for even then he had only made a be- 
ginning ! He had only made a place for his creatures 
to dwell in. Before Him stretched almost infinite 
cycles of duration. In the far perspective, He saw 
nations rise and sink, civilizations blossom and decay, 
the advent and the mission of Jesus, the struggles of 
good and evil, of light and darkness, of truth and 
error ; and on the remote pinnacle of destiny, faintly 
rising to his eye in the eternity before him, the blazing 
windows and the white pillars and spires of the Temple 
of Consummation ! 

Some people wonder how God can bear as He does 
with human frailty and wickedness. In effect, they ask 
why He does not sweep the whole race out of exist- 
ence, and start again. As if the Being who had pa- 
tiently wrought and waited for myriads of ages to 
prepare for man had not patience to allow him to work 
out his destiny ! Ah, short-sighted mortals ! Has not 
God an eternity to accomplish His ends in ? Is He, 
before the eyes of a universe, to relinquish an experi- 
ment, and pronounce that to be a failure on which He 
has expended such infinite pains and patience ? Not 



Patience. 35 

He; and the man must be idiotic who cannot draw 
from this patience food for hope, even when mercy 
seems exhausted. 

But this divine element enters more or less into 
human character, and it is with this that we hay 
specially to do. There is no well-doing — no godlike 
doing — that is not patient doing. There is no great 
achievement that is not the result of patient working 
and waiting. There is no royal road to any thing. 
One thing at a time — all things in succession. That 
which grows fast, withers as rapidly ; that which grows 
slowly, endures. The silver-leafed poplar grows in one 
decade, and dies in the next ; the oak takes its century 
to grow in, and lives and dies at leisure. This law runs 
through all vegetation, through all creation, and through 
all human achievement. A fortune won in a day is lost 
in a day ; a fortune won slowly, and slowly compacted, 
seems to acquire from the hand that won it the prop- 
erty of endurance. "We all see this, we all acknowl- 
edge it, yet we are all in a hurry. We are in haste for 
position ; we are in haste for wealth ; we are in haste 
for fame ; we are in haste for every thing that is desir- 
able, and that shapes itself into an object of life. In 
that worthiest of all stru^orles — the straggle for self- 
mastery and goodness — we are far less patient with 
ourselves than God is with us. We forget, too, in our 
impatience with others — with their weakness and 



36 Gold-Foil. 



wrong-doing — that there is One who sees this weakness 
and wickedness as we never can see it, yet is unruffled 
by it. " Work and wait " — " work and wait " — is what 
God says to us in Creation and in Providence. We 
work, and that is godlike ; we get impatient, and there 
crops out our human weakness. 

Man of business, do the gains come in slowly ? Do 
your neighbors outstrip you in prosperity ? Do you 
hear of friends grown suddenly rich by great specula- 
tions, and is your heart discouraged with the prospect 
before you ? Does it seem to you that your lot is hard 
beyond that of other men ? God is only trying to see 
how much you are like Him — how much of His own 
life is in you. If He is the kind father I take Him to 
be, He is quite as anxious to bless you as you are 
anxious to be blest ; and as He does not appear to be 
in a hurry to have you become rich, it strikes me that 
it would be quite as well for you to take your stand 
"with Him, and be willing to w r ork and wait. Don't be 
in a hurry. The world was not made in a minute ; yet 
what a marvel of beauty and w r ealth it is ! You say 
that you have worked hard enough, and that is very 
well ; but have you done that which is harder than 
work, and quite as essential — have you waited patiently 
and well ? Have you not been fretting and complain- 
ing all the time ? All things come in time to him who 
can wait. 



Patience. 37 



Weary mother, with a clamorous family at your 
knee — a family clamorous for bread, for clothing, for 
amusement, for change for their restless natures— do 
you get impatient ; and do the fretful words sometimes 
escape to wound those young ears and chafe those fresh 
hearts ? Do you look forward through ten, fifteen, or 
twenty years, and, seeing no intermission of daily care 
for these impulsive spirits, and ceaseless ministry to 
their fickle impulses, sigh over your bondage? Be 
patient. Think of God's patience with His family — a 
thousand millions here on the earth alone — deadly 
quarrels going on among them all the time, cheating 
between brethren, wildness with greed for gold, mil- 
lions of them never looking up to thank the hand that 
feeds them during their life! Think how He looks 
down, and sees millions bound in compulsory servitude 
to other millions — sees great multitudes meet in the 
madness- of war to slaughter one another ; sees a whole 
world lying in wickedness, carelessness, and ingratitude, 
Mark how He causes the seasons to come and go, 
how seed-time and harvest fail not, how His unwearied 
servant the sun shines on the evil and the good alike, 
how the gentle rain falls with no discrimination on 
the just and the unjust. Think how He patiently bears 
with your impatience. Listen ! There comes no out- 
cry from the heavens to still all this wild unrest ; but 
gently, patiently, the ministry of nature and of Provi- 



38 Gold-Foil. 



dence proceeds from day to day and from year to 
year — as gently and patiently and unremittingly, as 
if it were universally greeted with gratitude, and nour- 
ished only plants that were blossoming with praise. 
Can you not be patient with the little ones you love 
for a little while ? You really ought to be ashamed 
of impatience, with such an example of patience as God 
gives, especially as you are a sharer in its benefits. 

Discouraged pastor, mourning over the lack of re- 
sults in your ministry, do you sometimes get impatient 
with the listlessness and coldness of your flock, and rail 
at them in good set terms ? Surely you have forgotten 
who and what you are. You are God's minister — the 
promulgator of his religion. He sent the Great Teacher 
to the earth eighteen hundred years ago : and those to 
whom He was sent maligned Him, doubted Him, perse- 
cuted and killed Him. For eighteen hundred years He 
has patiently waited to see the religion of Jesus estab- 
lished in the earth, and he is waiting patiently still, 
though it spreads so slowly that its progress from cen- 
tury to century can hardly be traced. He planted the 
true seed, and He is confident that it will germinate 
and grow, until its branches shall fill the whole earth. 
He has confidence in His truth : have you ? Can you 
not be content, like Him, to plant, and nourish, ^nd 
water, and tenderly prune, and trust for the issue ? He 
has distinctly told you that with all your planting and 



Patience. 39 



watering the increase is only of Him. If you are faith- 
ful in these offices, and get impatient for results, does 
it not occur to you that you are getting quite as impa- 
tient with God as you are with your people? If He 
have reason for withholding increase, you have no 
reason to find fault. The work is His, the results are 
His — they are not yours. Therefore be content to 
work and wait, for no man can work in perfect harmony 
with God who is not as willing to wait as to work. 
God works and waits always, and in every thing, and 
you are a discord in the economy of His universal 
scheme the moment you become impatient. 

Champion of Truth, lover of humanity, hater of 
wrong, do you grow tired and disgusted with your fel- 
lows ? Do you grow angry when you contemplate in- 
stituted cruelty ? Are you tempted to turn your back 
upon those whom you have striven to bless, when they 
stop their ears, or laugh you in the face ? Do you feel 
your spirit stirred with deep disgust, or swelling with 
rage, when those to whom you have given your best 
life — your noblest love, your most humane impulses, 
your truest ideal of that which is good — contemn you, 
misconstrue you, and persecute you ; — when thos*e 
whom you seek to reform brand you as a pestilent fel- 
low, a disturber, and a busybody ? It is very natural 
that you should do so, but it is far from godlike. Be 
patient. If this world of natural beauty was not made 



40 Gold-Foil. 



in a minute ; if it had to go through convulsions and 
changes, age after age, before the flowers could grow 
and the maize could spring, think you that the little 
drop of vital power that is in you can reform the w^orld 
of mind, and bring out of chaos the realization of the 
fair ideal that is in you in the brief space of your life ? 
Pour into your age your whole life, if it be pure and 
good, and be sure that you have done something — your 
little all. There shall be no drop of that life wasted. 
Where you put it there it shall be, an atom in the 
slowly rising monument of a world redeemed to 
goodness. 

If you cannot take counsel of God in this thing, 
and, with the counsel, courage, take it from the most 
insignificant of His creatures — the madrepores that 
build islands covered with gardens of wonderful beauty 
under the sea. The little polyp may well be discour- 
aged w T hen it sees how little it can do in the creation 
of the coral w^orld to w T hich, by a law of its nature, it is 
bound to contribute. But it gives to this world the 
entire results of its little life — a calcareous atom — 
and then it dies. But that atom is not lost ; God takes 
care of that. All He asks of the madrepore is its life, 
and though it may not witness the glory of the struc- 
ture it assists to rear, it has a place in the structure — 
an essential place-— and there it is glorified. Through 
those strangely-fashioned trees the green sea sweeps. 



Patience. 41 



and wondering monsters swim and stare, till, little by 
little, as the ages with heavy feet tramp over the upper 
earth, they rear themselves into the light, and hold the 
turbulent sea asleep beneath the smile of God. Little 
by little they lay the foundations upon which a new 
life rests, and become the eternal pillars of a temple in 
which man worships, and from which his voice of praise 
ascends to Heaven. Therefore, if the patience of God 
do not inspire and instruct you, let the self-sacrifice of 
the polyp shame you, and the results of that sacrifice 
encourage you. Give that little life of yours with its 
little result to the twig where you hang, never minding 
the surges of the sea that try to dislodge you, nor the 
monsters that stare at you, and be sure that the tree 
shall emerge at last into the light of Heaven — the 
basis and the assurance of a new and glorious life for a 
race. 

Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibili- 
ties of life, prophet of the millennium, do you get im- 
patient with the prosaic life around you — the dulness, 
and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men ? Fret 
not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before 
you ; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and 
plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it 
some day. Work for immortality if you will; then 
wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a 
coming ao'c will not. Plunge into the eternal forest 



42 Gold-Foil. 



that sleeps in front, and blaze the trees. Be a pioneer 
of Time's armies as they march into the unseen and un- 
known. Signalize the advance guard from afar. If 
you have the privilege of living the glorious life of 
which you dream, are you not paid ? Why, there are 
uncounted multitudes who walk under the stars, and 
never dream that they are beautiful. There are crowds 
who trample a flower into the dust, without once think- 
ing that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God 
under their heel. There are myriads of stolid eyes that 
gaze into the ethereal vermilion of a sunset without 
dreaming that God lighted the fire. The world could 
see no beauty in the greatest life and character that ever 
existed, why they should desire it, and yet God does 
not get impatient because He is not recognized. The 
stars stud the sky as thickly as ever ; the flowers bloom 
as freshly as at first, and breathe no complaints with 
their dying perfume; the sunset patiently varies its 
picture from nightfall to nightfall, though no one praises 
it ; and Christ, in the garb of humble men and women, 
looks from pure and patient eyes in every street, and 
ooks none the less sweetly because he is not seen. 
Therefore, O poet, be patient, though the world see not 
the visions that enchain you, and remember what com- 
panionship is yours. Aye, be patient ! 



IV. 



PERFECT LIBERTY. 

41 For the upright there are no laws. 1 ' 

" Laws were made for rogues." 

" Love rules his kingdom without a sword." 

" Love makes labor light." 



A TIPSY man, laboring alike under an uncom- 
fortable confusion of ideas and an incompetent 
control of his muscles, is apt to find a sidewalk of com- 
mon width too narrow for him. The trees and lamp- 
posts rush with violence to assault him, curbstones rise 
in his path with ruffianly greetings, and the inclination 
of a dead level is such that at last he slides into the 
gutter, where he breathes out his curses upon the dan- 
gers of the way. The sober man walks the same path 
without seeing lamp -post or tree, and without being 
conscious of the slightest restraint upon his movements. 
We put a poke upon a vicious cow, because she has a 
disposition to go precisely where she is not wanted to 



44 Gold-Foil. 



go — into a cornfield, where she will do serious damage 
to the proprietor, and kill herself with over-eating. 
She comes up to the fence that she would fain demolish 
or surmount, and the new restraint vexes her beyond 
measure. Her companion in the field is an innocent, 
docile creature, that is content with her honest grass, 
and her honest way of getting it. So, while the thief 
stands raving and floundering at the fence, she fills her- 
self with clover, and contentedly lies down to the pleas- 
ant task of rumination, without a thought of restraint 
or deprivation. For the innocent cow there is no 
poke. 

The perfect liberty of any faculty of the mind lies 
within the range of its office. Acquisitiveness is a 
faculty of mind. It is endowed with a certain legiti- 
mate office, and in that office it has full liberty — liberty 
in the field in which it has its life. If it overstep the 
bound of its office, and steal, it preys upon the fruits 
of the liberty of others, and degenerates into licen- 
tiousness. Then it feels the law which defines the boun- 
daries of its field of liberty, but until that time, the law 
is a thing unfelt. A horse, standing upon the beach, 
and looking out to the sea as a realm forbidden to him, 
may be imagined to find fault with the line of surf that 
warns him away from a region in which he has no legiti- 
mate rights and no legitimate office. The beach may 
be free to him for miles, and pastures may recede from 



Perfect Liberty. 45 

it for other miles, over which he has liberty to run and ■ 
range at will, with the opportunity to supply all his 
wants, and expend all his vitality. If he plunge into 
the sea, he feels the law that defines the boundaries of 
his perfect liberty. Laws are the very bulwarks of liber- 
ty. They define every man's rights, and stand between 
and defend the individual liberties of ail men. The mo- 
ment that law is destroyed, liberty is lost ; and men left 
free to enter upon the domains of each other, destroy each 
other's rights, and invade the field of each other's liberty. 
No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he 
remains within the sphere of his liberty — a sphere, by 
the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his 
powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants. It 
is only rogues who feel the restraints of law. We live 
in a free country, and its freedom consists in the pro- 
tection w r hich the laws give to each man's liberty to 
pursue his legitimate ends of life in a legitimate way. 
We rejoice in these laws, because they guard our 
liberty — not because they interfere with it. We make 
them, support them, and obey them, in the exercise of 
our liberty. They stand between us and that licen- 
tiousness which is the invader and destroyer of liberty. 
There is no state of society under heaven, and there 
can be none, where perfect liberty exists, without an 
obedience to law so glad and so entire that the re- 
straints of the law are unfelt. 



46 Gold-Foil. 



Thus much is true, without any reference to God, 
or any relation to religion. Thus much is philosophical- 
ly true. Advancing a step in the discussion, another 
element enters in — the element of love — the perfect law 
of liberty. The moment the soul is lifted in love to its 
Maker, and extended in love to its fellows, the whole 
realm of law is illuminated by a new light, and there is 
only darkness beyond its boundaries. Before this il- 
lumination, self-interest, or right philosophical judgment 
may be sufficient to keep the soul contentedly within 
the boundaries of law. After it, it becomes the subject 
of duty — duty to God and duty to man. It recognizes 
relationships on the lines of which it is to flow out in 
piety and good works. The law which defines its indi- 
vidual liberty is in a measure sunk out of sight, and 
the law which defines its duty is that only which it sees. 
The influx of this new love is essentially the influx of 
a new life. This realm of duty is the one which, 
through the vestibule of law, I have endeavored to 
lead the reader. 

Can the soul enjoy perfect liberty in the realm of 
duty ? This question I wish to answer for the benefit 
of a great multitude of men and women who, with a 
sense of great self-sacrifice, have taken upon them the 
responsibilities of the Christian life. To these, this life 
is a life of crosses and mortifications. They find their 
duty unpleasant and onerous. It is to them a law of 



Perfect Liberty. 4f 

restraint and constraint. They are constantly oppressed 
with what they denominate "a sense of duty." It 
torments them with a consciousness of their inefficien- 
cy, with a painful and persistent questioning of their 
motives, with multiplied and perplexing doubts of the 
genuineness of their religious experience. Christian 
liberty is a phrase of which they know not the mean- 
ing, for they are, in fact and in feeling, the slaves of 
duty. They feel themselves enchained within the 
bounds of a system superinduced upon their life, and 
not in any proper sense incorporated with it. 

I ask the question again : Can the soul enjoy per- 
fect iiberty in the realm of duty ? I answer in the af- 
firmative, and express my belief that that liberty may 
be of as much higher quality and of as much greater 
extent than in the realm of pure law, as the love from 
which it springs is superior as a basis of action to an 
intellectual apprehension and acceptation of law as the 
condition of liberty. Love is its own law, and duty is 
only the name of those lines of action which naturally 
flow out from love. I apprehend nothing as Christian 
duty which does not naturally flow out from Christian 
love. All those actions which love naturally dictate? 
and performs, if performed by any individual as simple 
duties — performed grudgingly and difficultly — amount 
to nothing as Christian actions. They become simply 
bald acts of morality, and have no connection with re- 



48 Gold-Foil. 



ligion. Let me not be misunderstood. Love may 
constrain to acts that, for various reasons, are difficult 
of performance ; but difficult acts, performed from a 
simple sense of duty — acts in no way growing out of 
love — acts performed only for the satisfaction of con- 
science and for the acquisition of mental peace — are 
not Christian acts, essentially, and cannot be made to 
appear such. 

Love, I say again, is its own law. A man who loves 
God supremely, and his neighbor as himself, may do 
exactly what he pleases — all that he wishes to do — all 
that by this love he is moved to do. There is no li- 
cense here, for a man possessed by these affections will 
please to do, wish to do, and be moved to do, only 
those things that follow the lines of duty. Here is 
Christian liberty, and it is nowhere else. Here is 
Christian liberty, and there is no such other liberty as 
this under the sun. It is the liberty of angels and of 
God Himself. It rises infinitely above the liberty de- 
fined by law, and is, in fact and in terms, " the liberty 
of the sons of God " — one of the most suggestive and 
inspiriting phrases, by the way, contained within the 
lids of the Bible. The most beautiful sight this earth 
affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty 
is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow 
and expression of the love which has become the cen- 
tral principle of their life. For such men and women 



Perfect Liberty. 49 



there is neither law nor duty, as a hinderance to perfect 
liberty. They are on a plane above both. They live 
essentially in the same love out of which law and duty 
proceeded. Law and duty were born of love, Love 
originally drew their outlines and carved the channels 
of their operation, and, rising into an appropriation and 
incorporation of the mother element, the soul loses, of 
course, the necessity of its offspring, — has, in fact, 
within itself both element and offspring. 

Perhaps my meaning will be more exactly appre- 
hended by the use of illustrations. A woman finds 
herself the mother of a family of children, whom she 
loves as her own life. It is against the law that she 
turn them out of doors, or kill them, or maltreat them 
in any way. Does she feel the restraint of these laws ? 
Does she ever think of their existence ? Do they cur- 
tail her liberty to any extent ? Not at all, for her love 
is her law. Rising now into the realm of duty, we see 
that she owes 'to them the preparation of their food, 
the care of their persons and clothing, ministry in sick- 
ness, home education, sympathy in trouble, discipline 
for disobedience, and all motherly offices. Now do 
these duties come to her simply as duties ? Does she 
feed and clothe her children, minister to them in sick- 
ness, educate them and sympathize with them, from a 
sense of duty ? Ah, no ! In the domain of motherly 
duty, love is her law, and the performance of these 
3 



50 Gold-Foil. 



duties is simply the natural outflow and expression of 
the love which she bears to her children. The stronger 
and the more perfect her love, the smaller the restraints 
of law and the constraints of duty ; and when this love 
becomes, as in many instances it does become, an all- 
absorbing passion, law and duty, in connection with 
her relations to her children, are things she never even 
dreams of. Her neighbors may call her a slave to her 
children, but she knows that she is in the enjoyment of 
a most delicious liberty — the liberty to do precisely 
those things which please her most, inspired by a love 
that knows neither law nor duty. 

Suppose now that this mother die and a step-mother 
take her place. She may find among those children 
one so intractable and ungrateful that it would be a 
pleasure to her to turn it out of the house, but the law 
prevents. She then looks upon law as a restraint upon 
her liberty. But, in the place she has taken, she per- 
ceives that she owes duties to this family of children. 
She has an intellectual appreciation of the duties of her 
office, and undertakes to perform them. We will sup- 
pose that, from a simple sense of duty, she devotes 
herself to them as thoroughly as their own mother did 
before her. Under circumstances like these, duty 
would become a burden, and a bondage. What was 
almost a divine liberty with the mother, becomes to the 
step-mother a crushing slavery. Conscientious but 



Perfect Liberty. 51 



unloving, she wears out a life of servitude to duty, and 
of course is most unhappy. 

It seems to me that these simple illustrations throw 
unmistakable light upon this whole subject. Christian 
love knows'no such thing as slavery to law and to duty 
The higher, the purer, and the stronger this love, the 
more do law and duty disappear, until, finally, they are 
unthought of, and the soul finds itself free — without a 
single shackle on its faculties, or a single restraint upon 
its movements. It acts within the lines of law, because 
its highest life naturally lives within them. Those 
lines are not described to it by a foreign or superior 
power ; they are defined by itself, in the full exercise of 
liberty born of love. It performs its duties because 
they lie in the path of its natural action. Neither re- 
straint nor constraint is felt, because, in the perfect 
liberty which is born of perfect love, it chooses to do, 
and does, that against which there is no law, and that 
in which abides all duty. 

So, if there be any struggling, sorrowful Christians, 
who are in the habit of taking up daily crosses, and 
doing unpleasant things, because, and simply because, 
they deem them to be duties; I have only this to say 
to them — that no act of theirs, performed simply be- 
cause it is a duty, and performed with a sense of con- 
straint that does not come from genuine love to God 
and man, can be looked back upon as a Christian duty 



52 Gold-Foil. 



worthily performed. As a moral act, conscientiously 
performed, there is in it a quality of goodness, but it is 
the work of a slave and not of a freeman. My servant 
may bring me a glass of water because I command her 
to, and in so doing she will perform her duty, though 
it may be to her a task. If, when I enter my house, 
heated with walking and labor, my daughter bring me 
a glass of water, from love of me and sympathy for me, 
the character of the act is essentially changed. Her 
act is in the domain of perfect liberty, and had its birth 
in love. The two acts are identical, they cost the same 
amount of labor, both were performed in the discharge 
of a duty, yet the dullest intellect will apprehend a dif- 
ference in their quality that elevates one almost infi- 
nitely above the other. 

There is no release in this world, or the next, from 
the restraints of law and the constraints of duty, save 
in love. Duty, especially out of the domain of love, is 
the veriest slavery of the world. The cry of the soul 
is for freedom. It longs for liberty, from the date of 
its first conscious moments. This natural longing is 
not born of depravity, but points with an unerring 
finger to a source of satisfaction existing somewhere 
for it in the universe of God. Law surrounds us while 
we are low, and we beat our heads against it and are 
baffled. Duty takes us upon a higher plane — on the 
plane of conscience, or an insufficient Christian love, 



Perfect Liberty. 53 

and forces us to the performance of tasks which are 
hard and ungrateful. We ask for something better 
than this, and we get it when love fills us full of itself, 
and absorbs us into itself. What the Christian world 
wants is more love. Love rules his kingdom without 
a sword. There is no compulsion here. Love makes 
labor light. There are no unpleasant tasks here — at 
least, none whose unpleasantness destroys a divine 
pleasure in their performance. A man who feels that 
his religion is a slavery, has not begun to comprehend 
the real nature of religion. That heart of his is still 
selfish. There is lacking the elevation, the entire con- 
secration which alone can introduce him into that 
glorious liberty which the real sons of God enjoy. 

Ah, this liberty ! How little have we of it in the 
world ! How we go groping, and mourning, and wail- 
ing through the darkness — \v ailed in by law, goaded 
on by duty, and filled with the fears w^hich perfect love 
casts out, when all the while there hang above us 
crowns within our reach, which, grasped, would make 
us kings ! Oh, it is very pitiful — this sight of Christian 
slaves ! Most pitiful, however, does it become, when 
we comprehend the fact that in this slavery many think 
they find the evidence of their Christianity. They 
bear burdens throughout their lives which wear into 
their very hearts, and think there is merit in it. Mor- 
tification, penance, bondage — are these the rewards of 



54 Gold-Foil. 



Christianity ? Crosses, servitude, fear — are these the 
credentials of love ? Out upon such mischievous er- 
ror ! Into it, God forbid that soul of yours or mine 
should be drawn ! What great wonder is it that the 
world is frightened away from such bondage as this ? 

No : perfect love holds the secret of the world's 
perfect liberty. It is only this that releases us from 
law, and discharges us from duty, by making law the 
definition of our life, and duty the natural, free outflow 
of our souls. Into this liberty Divine Love would lead 
us. Up to it would Heaven lift us. In it only is the 
perfection of Christian action. In it only can the soul 
find that freedom for which it has yearned through all 
its history. In it only lives an exuberant, boundless 
joy — -joy in tribulation, joy in labor, joy in every thing 
except that world of slavish life that lives below it, 
bound to law and duty, 1>o forms and creeds, to morti- 
fications and penances, selfishness and sin. "We shall 
know more about it up yonder. 






V. 



TRUST, AND WHAT COMES OF IT. 



" He wlio sows his land trusts in God." 

" Trust everybody, but thyself most." 

"Trusting often makes fidelity." 

" If you would make a thief honest, trust him." 

<; Trust thyself only, and another shall not betray thee." 

T is sadly humiliating to think that more than 
a moiety of the world's trust in God is blind and 
unconscious. We trust in lines of precedent, and links 
of succession, and laws and principles. Very little of 
our trust is immediate. We sow our seed, and bury it 
in the earth, trusting that the germs we deposit will 
proceed to the beautiful unfolding of the harvest ; yet 
our trust is in the seed, the season, the sun, the soil — 
any thing but the God who instituted vegetable life, 
and all its laws and conditions. We are compelled to 
trust something, however, or we should die. Trust 
lies at the basis of every scheme of human life, and is 



56 Gold-Foil. 



the corner-stone of the temple of human happiness. 
If our trust fail to reach God directly, or if it fail to 
become transitive through nature into God, then it 
must abide in nature. It must live somewhere. "We 
trust to some power or principle for the rising and the 
setting of the sun, for the sleep of winter, the resurrec- 
tion of spring, the fructification of summer, and the 
fruition of autumn. We know nothing of the future. 
We do not know that rain will fall — that seed-time 
and harvest will come ; but we trust that they will ; 
and this trust is so strong that, practically, it answers 
the purposes of foreknowledge — it brings the feeling 
of security to the heart, and furnishes a basis for the 
plans necessary to perpetuate the life of the race. But 
we trust no further than we can see. Something must 
come between us and the Being upon whom we rely 
for every thing, before our hearts will poise themselves 
in trust. We trust nature, our fellows, and even God 
Himself, because w r e are obliged to. We w 7 ould trust 
nobody and no thing if we could get along without it. 
We trust nature because, if we did not, we could not 
live. We trust God, strongly or feebly, because we 
know that in the life beyond this our destiny is in His 
hands. We trust our fellows, because it is necessary 
to have one heart, at least, in whose confidence we may 
dwell. A man who is poor in trust is the poorest of all 
Qo&'s creatures. 



Truft, and what comes of it. 57 

Now why this strange reluctance in trusting? 
Why should it be necessary to force us into trusting 
when, without it, we cannot be happy for a moment — 
when, without it, we cannot institute a single plan re- 
lating to the future ? -I think that the lack of trust in 
God and our universal distrust of men grow out of a 
sense of our own ill desert and our own untrust worthi- 
ness. I find always those who are the richest in trust 
toward God and man the most trustworthy in them- 
selves. I find those who go about with open hearts 
and honest lips, with no intent of evil toward others, 
those who trust men the most invariably. The child 
trusts because it finds no reason in itself why it should 
not. The charity that thinketh no evil trusts in God 
and trusts in men. The heart that knows itself to be 
false, trusts neither in God nor men. So, naturally, 
and after the common order of things, we shall get no 
more trust in this world until the world which must 
bring the grace into exercise is better. As this world 
grows better, the trust which forms the basis of its 
happiness will grow broader, a more luxuriant social 
life will spring up, and the great brotherhood of hu- 
manity will not only come nearer together, but they 
will be blended and fused in an all-pervading sympathy. 

Naturally, and after the common order of things, I 
say, the world will have no more voluntary trust until 
it is better ; but trusting as a policy may be instituted 



58 Gold-Foil. 



for the purpose of making the world better ; and it is 
this policy that I propose to make the subject of this 
article. A child that comes to me in danger, or sor- 
row, or perplexity, and takes my hand, and looks into 
my eyes, and utters its wants in trust, begets in me 
trustworthiness, on the instant. It rouses into action 
all within me that is good and honorable and true, and 
I cannot betray that trust without a loss of self-respect 
that will make me contemn myself for a life-time. A 
maiden who comes into my presence in guileless trust, 
and in any way places her destiny in my hands, would 
shame me into trustworthiness were my heart teeming 
with impurity. Even the timid hare, hunted from 
field to field, and hard beset by the baying hounds, 
would find a protector in me should it leap desperately 
into my arms, and lay the tumult of its frightened 
heart upon the generous beatings of mine. The child, 
the maiden, the hare would beget in me trustworthi- 
ness, simply by trusting me. They would make me 
considerate and generous and honorable. I should 
despise myself were I to harm either by a thought, 
uch beings, under such circumstances, would come to 
me as missionaries, bearing one of the very sweetest 
of the lessons of Christ. 

These illustrations seem to me to be pregnant with 
meaning, and instinct with illumination. They open 
to me the door of a policy, and reveal to me a ministry 



Truft, and what comes of it. 



59 



equally beautiful and beneficent, yet they involve no 
new law, and spring out of no newly-discovered princi 
pie. All seed produces after its kind. If I plant com, 
I reap corn ; if I plant lilies, I gather lilies. Like pro- 
duces like in the spiritual no less than in the material 
universe. Love begets love ; anger begets anger. If 
I sow to the w r ind, I reap the whirlwind. So, if I sow 
trust, I reap trust. The soil will honor the seed. Of 
course, I state this as a general fact. There are souls 
as w r eli as soils that will produce nothing good. There 
are souls as well as soils so sour, so rank with pollution, 
or so poor, that nothing but w^eeds will grow in them ; 
but, as a general fact, in the worlds of mind and mat- 
ter, the soil will honor the seed. Wherever there may 
be the slightest promise of return, w r e are to sow our 
trust, 

Now what is the aspect that life presents to us ? 
Is it not that of universal distrust ? Nay, has not dis- 
trust become an instituted thing, that has taken form 
in maxims and proverbs ? There is hardly a language 
that does not contain a proverb which says in words, 
or effect, " Trust thyself only, and another shall not be- 
tray thee " — a proverb that bears the very singe and 
scent of hell. Thus distrust is not only a fact, but it 
has become a policy. It is inculcated by universal 
human society ; and as like produces like, distrust is 
everywhere reaped, because it is everywhere sown 



60 Gold-Foil. 

We take no pains to nurse honor by trusting it. We 
trust interest and appetite, and every thing base and 
selfish in a man, quicker than we do any good quality 
in him. We trust that which is beast-like in men, and 
refuse to trust that which is godlike. We decline to 
bring honor into exercise, and honor dwindles under 
the treatment. 

One of the most notable illustrations of the evil 
consequences of distrust is that afforded by the relative 
positions of the sexes. The institutions of society and 
education, so far as they have to do with these rela- 
tions, are established on the theory that men and 
women are not to be trusted together. Our colleges 
and schools, and all the institutions and usages of social 
life, recognize, as a cardinal fact, the untrustworthiness 
of men and women. They proceed upon the theory 
that men will betray if they can, and that virtue in 
women is only a name. Wherever this theory is 
pushed to its extreme, there we shall find always the 
qualities suspected. I suppose that there is no country 
in the world where young women are guarded with 
such care as in France. The very extreme of punctilio 
is exacted on the part of parents, and a woman is hardly 
allowed to see her lover alone until after her marriage. 
The duenna is her companion in society, as constantly 
as her own shadow. Yet in France, as in all countries 
where this extreme of caution is observed — where this 



Truft, and what comes of it. 



61 



distrust takes its severest form — is female virtue the 
rarest, and masculine licentiousness the most universal. 
Virtue shrinks and refuses to live in the atmosphere of 
universal distrust. Manly purity and honor find no use 
for themselves where they are neither believed in nor 
appealed to. This distrust of the sexes, so persistently 
and powerfully inculcated by society, breeds untrust- 
worthiness, and sows broadcast the seeds of impurity. 
It always has been so, and it always will be. There is 
no remedy but in releasing society from the control of 
men and women who are sadly conscious of their own 
weaknesses, and in the assumption of the functions of 
education by men who are something more than saintly 
and suspicious grandmothers. 

Just look at this thing. Here are two sexes, in- 
tended by Heaven to be the companions of each other 
— intended to ennoble and purify each other, to enter 
into the most intimate, endearing and permanent rela- 
tions with each other, to draw from each other the 
very choicest of their earthly happiness — the two hemi- 
spheres of humanity necessary to the perfection and 
beauty of the great sphere of life — yet trained from the 
first dawning of their regard for one another to believe 
in their mutual untrustworthiness ! They are seated on 
different sides of the room where they meet to worship 
a common Lord. They are caged in boarding-schools, 
kept from association by all possible means, kept as 



62 Gold-Foil. 



much as may be from all knowledge of each other, 
trained to impurity of imagination by the very restraints 
which are put upon them to keep them pure. I believe 
in manly honor and womanly virtue; and that the 
more we trust them the more we develop them. I be- 
lieve that an honor never developed by the trust of 
pure and womanly hearts, and a virtue that has always 
lived in the poisonous atmosphere of distrust, and has 
never come out to stand alone in its own sweet self- 
assertion, are as good as brown paper, and only better 
in exceptional instances. I believe that all that is 
needed in America to make our nation as untrustworthy 
as France, is to draw the reins still tighter, build the 
walls of partition still higher, and come up, or down, to 
the policy of ignoring or contemning any power of 
virtue in men and women that will keep them from 
sin. 

3STow let us take a very simple and suggestive illus- 
tration of this principle of trust as it bears upon our 
general life. We meet, passing through the streets of 
the city or town where we live, a stranger. He ap- 
proaches us, and informs us that he has lost his way, 
and inquires the direction of his lodgings. He places 
himself, in his ignorance and helplessness, in our hands. 
He trusts the direction of his footsteps entirely to us. 
We can deceive him if we will; but we are upon our 
honor at once. We are trusted., and our hearts spring 



Truft, and what comes of it. 63 

naturally and instantaneously up to honor that trust. 
Now there is not one man in one hundred, in any class 
of society, who will not honor so simple a trust, and 
who does not feel that he is happier and better in con- 
sequence of honoring it. As polite and hearty offices 
of kindness has it been my lot to receive from entire 
strangers, under circumstances like these, as I have 
ever received in my life. To my mind, this little illus- 
tration denotes the general trustworthiness of men, and 
shows to me that if I approach my fellows in a simple, 
honest trust, they will deal fairly with me. Perhaps I 
should except itinerant dealers in crockery and glass- 
ware, professional Peter Funks, Irishmen who work by 
the job, and others whose sole living it is to get large 
returns for insignificant investments. But I do not 
propose to deal with these. They are not my fellows, 
and I have no relations with them. 

Everything good in a man thrives best when prop- 
erly recognized. Men do about what we expect of 
them. If a man with whom I have business relations 
perceive that I expect him to cheat me if he can, he 
will commonly do it. If, on the contrary, he see that 
I place implicit faith in his honor — that I trust him — 
every thing good in the man springs into life, and de- 
mands that that trust be honored. The sordid ele- 
ments of his character may possibly triumph, but they 
will triumph by a struggle which will weaken them. 



64 Gold-Foil. 



If I am unwilling to trust my son or my daughter out 
of my sight, I may reasonably expect to plant and nour- 
ish in them precisely those qualities which would make 
it dangerous for them to be out of my sight. If I re- 
fuse to trust the word of an honest man, I may reason- 
ably expect that with me, at least, he will break faith 
at the earliest opportunity. If I place all men and 
women at arm's length, in the fear that one of them 
will be treacherous to me, I place myself beyond the 
desert of good treatment at their hands — beyond the 
reach of their sympathies and their good-will — in short, 
I insult them, and voluntarily institute an antagonism 
which naturally breeds mischief in them toward me. 

So I advocate the policy of universal faith, as an 
essential condition of universal faithfulness — of univer- 
sal trust as a pre-requisite for universal trustworthiness. 
The world does not half comprehend the principle of 
overcoming evil with good, but clings to the infernal 
policy of overcoming evil with evil. I know of no 
power in the world but good, with which to overcome 
evil ; and when I see on every side exhibitions of a 
ack of personal honor, I know that I can foster the 
honor that remains in no way except by recognizing it 
and calling it into development by direct practical ap- 
peal, One of the most remarkable and suggestive pas- 
sages in the Bible, as it seems to me, is this : — "If we 
love not our brother whom we have seen, how can we 



Truft, and what comes of it. 



65 



love God, whom we have not seen ? " Many will fail 
to see how such a conclusion naturally follows from 
such premises ; but a little consideration will show that 
by the amount in which godlike elements etter into 
humanity, do human elements enter into divinity ; and 
that if we fail to recognize and love these elements as 
they are exhibited to us in human life, we shall neces- 
sarily fail to recognize and love the same elements in a 
Being removed beyond our vision, and, save as we see 
Him in humanity, beyond our comprehension. Now 
this thing is just as true of trust as it is of love. If we 
fail to trust that which is good in our brother, whom 
we have seen, how can we trust the same qualities in a 
Being whom we have not seen, and of whom we know 
nothing definitely, save as He has exhibited Himself to 
us in human life ? I know of nothing that antagonizes 
more directly with trust in the divine Being than the 
attitude and habit of distrust which we maintain 
towards our fellows. I believe that history and obser- 
vation will prove the entire soundness of this principle, 
and will show that every soul that sits apart from its 
brotherhood, in settled distrust, is devoid of faith and 
trust in the Being from whom it sprang. I believe that 
God has laid the way to trust in Himself through hu- 
manity, and that those who refuse to walk in it will 
fail to find a short cut to Him. 

Trust in man, then, is not only the true policy for 



66 Gold-Foil. 



the development of trustworthiness in man, but it is 
the legitimate path over which we must walk to the at- 
tainment of a secure and happy piety. Let us then 
throw the door of our hearts wide open. Let us give 
our hand to our brother in honest trust. One may 
possibly abuse our trust ; but ninety-nine in one hundred 
will not ; and we cannot afford to sacrifice so great a 
good for ourselves, and the great mass of men, to save 
our confidence from a single betrayal. We do not re- 
fuse our dirty pence to a beggar who appears to be in 
need, because he may abuse the gift j but we say that 
it is better that ten betray our trust than that one inno- 
cent man should suffer want. When the universal 
heart longs for trust, delights in trust, is made better 
by trust, and needs trust, we should give so cheap a 
thing freely. Especially should Ave do it when we can 
legitimately apply those precious words to the gift — 
" Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did 
it unto me." 



VI. 



THE IDEAL CHRIST. 



" Like master, like man. 1 ' 



IDEALS are the world's masters. That self which 
thinks, and judges, and knows, is always in ad- 
vance of that other self which, wills, and acts, and lives ; 
and all the spare capital of the soul — all that is not ap- 
propriated to the daily uses and experiences of its life — 
is invested in ideals — projected into forms where it may 
be kept, contemplated, and worshipped, as the insti- 
tuted sources of its inspiration. That which is godlike 
111 men goes ahead of them into some form of their own 
choosing, to becko^ tnem toward perfection and to lead 
them toward God. Wherever our affections cluster, 
there springs up an ideal character. Our ideal may not 
be up to the character which serves as its nucleus, nor 
identical with it in any way ; but," wherever God sees 



68 Gold-Foil. 



our love concentrating, He plants himself in the form 
of our noblest conceptions of honor, purity, and good- 
ness, that we may be attracted towards Him. "We fol- 
low the lines of the flight of our conceptions as the bee- 
hunters follow the flight of bees, for a little distance, 
and then we pause and let them feed again at our 
hearts, and follow their flight again, and repeat the 
process till, deep in the heart of the tree of life, we 
discover the store-house of the Divine Sweetness. God 
uses the ideals that we build as the media through 
which He inspires us. He employs them as agents by 
which to mould our character, so that if we could know 
the precise form of a man's ideals, we could know the 
influences at work upon him for his elevation and puri- 
fication. 

To illustrate the fact that our ideals are framed upon 
the objects of our affections, or the subjects of our no- 
bler sentiments, and that all their inspiring influences 
come to us on the lines of these affections and senti- 
ments, let me suppose an instance of the passion of 
love between the sexes. A man makes the acquaint- 
ance of a woman who inspires him with love. His rea- 
son, and all his previous knowledge of women, tell him 
that she is imperfect. His friends may tell him that 
she has a bad temper, that she is weak, that she is vain. 
But his love is fixed, and is as strong as a passion can 
be that lives in his nature ; and his imagination springs 



The Ideal Chrift. 



69 



to clothe her with all human perfections. Her move- 
ments are poetry, her eye is heaven, her voice is music, 
and her presence that of an angel. To him she is a pure, 
exalted, and beautiful being, and he worships the quali 
ties with which he invests her. Now it is very evident 
that he does not love the woman herself, but his ideal — - 
the creation of his own mind — the embodiment of his 
highest ideas of womanly loveliness. 

Mark how this ideal becomes an active power upon 
him — how it works a miracle upon him. Impure 
thoughts are banished from his mind, all inferior and 
unworthy aims are forsaken, he withdraws himself from 
degrading associations, and becomes ennobled and puri- 
fied. This character, made by himself, transforms him. 
He has made, for the time, a divinity ; and this divinity 
becomes his leader, strengthened purifier, and inspirer. 
The God within us seeks for incarnation no less than 
the God without us ; and the philosophical basis of the 
influence upon men of the incarnation of God's ideal is 
identical with that of the influence of their own in- 
carnated ideals. 

From this illustration I proceed to the proposition 
that it does not matter what legitimate passion or senti- 
ment may be called out with relation to an object, the 
result will always be the same in kind, if not in degree. 
We may admire, revere, esteem, love, and in many 
ways enjoy, through the exhibition to us of an infinite 



70 Gold-Foil. 



variety of characteristics ; and our admiration, rev- 
erence, esteem, love, and enjoyment, become the basis 
of the structure of ideals which shape the model of our 
own character, and inspire the life which it evolves. 
Idolatry is but the enthronement of the ideals of men 
w 7 ho are ignorant of the true God. These ideals are 
formed of the highest qualities and conceptions of those 
who make them. They may be very low, but they 
shape the life of the people that produce them. Mari 
olatry is the worship of a very pure ideal, and the 
tributes offered to the multiplied saints of the Roman 
calendar are all paid to the incarnations of the noblest 
conceptions of their devotees. The marvellous gift of 
song possessed by Jenny Lind makes her very admira- 
ble to us ; so Ave clothe her with the loveliest attributes, 
and make her a goddess. The real pow r er of Washing- 
ton upon the American mind is exerted, not by his sim- 
ple self, but by his character, modified, magnified, ex- 
alted, harmonized, and enthroned by that mind, as the 
impersonation of its highest conception of patriotism. 
In the American imagination, he is a demi-god — a grand 
Colossus — before w T hose august shade w r e stand as pig- 
mies. " All history is a lie," simply because no man 
can write it without being attracted to characters in 
such a w T ay as to make ideals of them, and thus to throw 
all the facts connected with them out of their legiti- 
mate relations. 



The Ideal Chrift. 



71 



I repeat the statement, that ideals are the world's 
masters. They order our life, they dictate the form of 
our history, they are the very essence of poetry, and 
the staple of all worthy fiction. Our affections choose 
an object, and straightway our imaginations lift it into 
apotheosis. We garner in it that which is best in our 
thought, and it becomes a power upon us for the eleva- 
tion of our life. 

I have attempted thus far only to reveal and illus- 
trate one of the most beautiful laws of mental action 
and re-action with which I am acquainted ; and if my 
reader is as much interested in it as I am, he will follow 
me into a consideration of its bearings upon Chris- 
tianity. I do not moot the question of the nature of 
the founder of Christianity, — that is, I do not say that 
Christ was God, or was not God, — but I say, what few 
will dispute, that he was God's incarnated ideal of a 
man — that Christ was all of God and his attributes 
that could be put into a man. It follows, that unless we 
can fully comprehend God's ideal, the Christ that we 
hold is our own ideal; and his ]30wer upon us is meas- 
ured and described by the character of our ideal. 
" What think ye of Christ ? " The answer to this great 
question, addressed to a soul or a sect, defines the type 
of Christianity possessed by such a soul or sect. He is 
what He is, a complete and definite character, but what 
we think of Him — our ideal of Him — determines the 



72 Gold-Foil. 



exact measure and kind of power with which He in- 
spires us, and the quality and extent of the develop- 
ment He works in us. 

It does not matter to this discussion whether Christ 
be what we believe Him to be, or a myth. If we ad- 
mit that He is the first fact in the Christian system of 
religion, and the primary source of all inspiration to 
Christian movement and progress, it will follow that 
every soul and every sect must possess the highest pos- 
sible idea of Christ before it can reach its highest point 
of development and its highest style of Christian life. 
According to our ideal of Christ — in the measure by 
which we invest Him with great attributes and authori- 
ty — does He become to us an inspiring force. A per- 
son who thinks that Christ was only a good man, with 
frailties like other men, — an individual who lived a very 
pure life — a reformer — can possess only a very shallow 
Christian piety, because he can find in his ideal of Christ 
no inspiration to a piety more profound. A man who 
thinks the grand characteristics of Christ were meek- 
ness, self-denial, and patience under injury, without ap- 
prehending the other side of His character, will be a 
mean and abject man. A man who thinks that there 
was nothing in Christ but love — that contempt of all 
meanness, supreme reverence for justice, displeasure 
with all sin, and hatred of all cruelty and oppression, 
had no place in Him, will expend his sympathy on pris- 



The Ideal Chrift. 



73 



oners, and build palaces for convicts, and circulate pe- 
titions for the abrogation of death penalties. 

If the doctrine I have advanced be sound, it is not 
necessary to refer to history to prove that the progress 
of Christianity has depended in all the past, (nor is the 
gift of prophecy requisite to the assertion that it will 
depend in all the future,) upon the prevalent ideal of 
Christ. The stream cannot rise higher than its foun- 
tain. Christ, as the inspirer of Christian life, is to the 
Christian world what that world makes Him to be. He 
must keep forever in advance of us, or there is no such 
thing as an infinite Christian progression. If there 
shall ever arrive a point in the history of any soul 
when its conception of Christ will cease to be higher 
than its own life, then that soul will have exhausted 
Christianity, and must stand still. If the history and 
being of Christ, as delineated by the Evangelists, forbid 
the world to form of Him the highest ideal which it is 
possible for it to conceive (which, of course, I do not 
believe), then those delineations must ultimately, by a 
philosophical necessity, become an insurmountable ob- 
stacle to the development of the highest style of Chris- 
tianity of which the world is capable. I believe there 
is no proposition in moral philosophy more clearly de- 
monstrable than this, and I hold myself in no way re- 
sponsible for the conclusions to which it leads. 

I believe in the proverb that any religion is better 
4 



74 Gold-Foil. 



than no religion, because every man's conception of 
goodness and duty is an advance of his character ; and 
when this conception is imbodied in an object of wor- 
ship, it becomes an elevating power upon his life that 
makes him capable of. a certain degree of civilization. 
All the ideals of all ages have been developed in the 
direction of the perfect man — toward God's ideal. 
The shadowy gods that w r ere grouped about Olympus 
were voiceless echoes of poor hearts crying after this 
perfect man. Hugh Miller, the inspired apostle of Sci- 
ence, found the rudiments of Christ in the rocks, and 
may we not find them in the souls # of men ? He found 
Jesus Christ in every lamina of the earth's crust ; and 
as, with faith in his heart and the iron in his hand, he 
toiled among the old red sandstone, he saw the fossil 
flora of his own Scotch hills tipped with tongues of 
flame and the fauna rigid with the stress of prophecy. 
It was as if the blood of Calvary had stained and in- 
formed with meaning the insensate mass in. which he 
wrought ; or as if he were, with a divine instinct, hew- 
ing away the rock from the door of the sepulchre 
where the ages had laid his Lord. With a vision that 
w T as too wonderful and too glorious for the protracted 
entertainment of his mighty brain, he saw the varied 
forms of life climbing through the rugged centuries, 
and leaping from creation to creation, until they took 
resolution in the union of matter and spirit in man. 



The Ideal Chrift. 



75 



But science with a pining heart behind it was not satis- 
fied even then. Not until the complex creature man 
vvas united with God was the chain complete. Then, 
with the last link fastened to The Throne, the grand 
riddle of " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world n swung; clear in the sight of angels and of men. 
So, to the d elver in the stratified history of the race, 
do the dead ideals point toward and prophesy the ad- 
vent and the character of the divine man. 

Any religion is better than no religion because there 
exists in the ideal which inspires it a rudiment of Christ, 
and there is nothing in any religion that tends in any 
direct and legitimate way to the good of the soul which 
entertains it that is not a fraction or fragment of Chris- 
tianity. Xow it is manifest that every soul which gives 
in its allegiance to a fragmentary ideal of Christ stands 
really, for the time, upon the j)lane of paganism. In 
the degree in which Plato's ideal man, or ideal god, 
was greater than any given Christian's ideal Christ, 
was his paganism better than that Christian's Christi- 
anity — better in its essence, and better in its practical 
power upon life. The moment that a mind definitely 
circumscribes, measures, weighs, and comprehends its 
Christ, it limits its own Christian development, by fix- 
ing a point beyond which no Christian inspiration will 
come to it. The moment we cease to grow " in the 
knowledge of Jesus Christ," because there is no more 



76 Gold-Foil. 



to know of him, God's ideal will become inferior to oiu 
ideal, for reaching it we shall immediately conceive an 
ideal beyond it, in accordance with that law of progress 
which always keeps our conceptions of goodness and 
greatness in advance of our life. So I ask the ques- 
tion : will God's Christ answer the purpose of eternal 
progress, or w T ill the time come when we shall be 
obliged to make a Christ for ourselves ? I let every 
man answer this question in his own way. 

This leads me to a thought which I consider of the 
highest practical importance to the Christian world., 
and which I should be glad to develop more fully than 
my space will allow. If the view which I have pre- 
sented of the law of progress in Christian life be cor- 
rect, then theology is a progressive science, and there 
is, and there can be, no standard of belief and faith 
good for all ages. As our ideal of Christ grows 
toward, or into, God's ideal, will that ideal change its 
relation to all the great facts of theology, as they are 
now comprehended by theologians. The theological 
systems of men and schools of men are determined 
always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the 
central fact of the Christian system. All the other 
facts arrange themselves around this ideal, and in har- 
mony with it. Thus, as our ideal advances, gathering 
new glory and greatness and goodness, will certain 
doctrines which we now consider essential recede into 



The Ideal Chrift. 77 

insignificance, and others now scarcely insisted upon 
spring into prominence, and others still, now unknown, 
will be develojDed. Preachers and professors, churches 
and synods, may protest against innovations, but they 
must come by necessity, if there be any genuine Chris- 
tian progress. A prescriptive standard of faith in 
Christianity— a system of everlasting progress — must 
forever remain an officious and sacrilegious intermed- 
dling with the grand fundamental law of Christianity. 

There is a time coming when all the sects which 
now divide Christendom will be melted into one. 
Nothing but the blotting out of Christianity can hinder 
it. My Presbyterian friend has his fragmentary ideal 
of Christ, my Episcopal friend another, my Roman 
Catholic friend another, and so on, through Baptists, 
Methodists, TJniversalists, and all the rest ; but as the 
Christian world's ideal of Christ advances, and he is 
apprehended in something of the fuhiess of his being 
and character, will the world's theologies approach 
each other. They must do so, and they are doing so 
to-day. The best evidence in the world that Christian- 
ity is advancing is found in the fact that the walls be- 
tween the sects are growing weaker, or falling in ruins. 
When they all come up to the point of any thing like 
a just idea of the sun in the centre of their systems, 
they will find that there is no difference between them. 
Therefore, let our ideal be kept well in advance, and 



78 Gold-Foil. 



always in advance ; and let that ideal be the law of a 
man's theology. If my neighbor's ideal of Christ be 
better than mine, then, not only his life, but his system 
of theology, will be better than mine ; and God forbid 
that I should curb him, or try to impose upon him my 
ideal and my theology. Ah, these Procrustean pre- 
scripts of belief — what unspeakably useless things are 
they! 




VII. 

PROVIDENCE. 

u Man proposes and God disposes." 

" Saint cannot, if God will not." 

" Nothing is lost on a journey by stopping to pray or to feed your horse. 1 

" God puts a good root in the little pig's way." 

" God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest." 

" He that is at sea has not the wind in his hands." 



THE progress of modern science, the opulence of 
modern invention, and the splendor of modern 
achievement in the arts, are themes of ceaseless glory- 
ing and gratulation. I rejoice with the gladdest, and 
glory with the proudest ; yet I feel that the world 
around me and the world within me have lost some- 
thing, even more precious than they have gained — not 
irrecoverably, but, for the time, practically. The more 
the knowledge of material things has crowded in upon 
the apprehension of the world — the more the world 
has learned of the laws of matter, and the more stu- 



80 Gold-Foil. 



pendous the results it has achieved by laying those 
laws under tribute — the more from a large class of 
minds has faith retired, and Providence become a 
meaningless name. We drive toward materialism. 
We have become practical believers in necessity* 
Every thing is controlled by law. The machine has 
been wound up, the being who made and set it in op- 
eration has retired, and all that we can do is to fall 
into our place, and be borne on, careful only that no 
cog-wheel catch our fingers, and no weight descend 
upon our heads. 

It is not only the irreligious world that disbelieves 
in Providence. I am inclined to think that there are 
Christians in large numbers who never dream of re- 
ceiving blessings in answer to their prayers — Chris- 
tians who would be absolutely startled with the 
thought that God had directly, and with special pur- 
pose, granted one of their petitions. God has come to 
be " counted out of the ring." Practically, we believe 
that He never interferes with the operation of one of 
His own laws — that no influence, under the control of 
His will, acting from daily and momently arising mo- 
tives, can, or does, act with supreme power upon the 
shain of cause and effect established at the creation of 
the universe. Too much, even in the Christian imag- 
ination, God is a prisoner, shut up within the walls of 
His own laws — a Being who has farmed out the uni- 



Providence. 81 



verse to the great firm of Laws and Principles, and is 
quietly waiting, with nothing to do, and no power to 
do any thing, till the lease expire. The man who de- 
clared that there was no use in praying for rain so long 
as the wind was in the north, illustrates the essential 
position of every nine minds in ten throughout Chris- 
tendom. This, I know, is a sweeping statement, and I 
shall be very glad to be convicted of its falsehood. 
There is, doubtless, a strife constantly going on in a 
great multitude of minds to escape from the clutch of 
laws, and to find a Father's embrace, yet the majority 
of them " take things as they come," and, at most, ex- 
pect God to do only those things for them which are 
outside the strict domain of natural law. Law is God, 
practically — Law, a thing of God, an institution born 
of Him, is put in His place, and He is shut out behind 
it. Thus the world is turned into a great mill, estab- 
lished on certain principles for the grinding out of 
certain results ; and into the hopper all this great ag- 
gregate of individuals is poured like grain to be ground. 
I will not say that the absorption of the modern 
mind in scientific studies and the production of great 
material results is entirely responsible for this reduction 
of the universe to essential orphanage, but its tendency, 
joined to the natural gravitation of our appetites and 
passions, has had the decisive power to sink us in that 
direction. To reveal this tendency to those in whom it 
4* 



82 



Gold-Foil. 



unconsciously exists, and to counteract it, so far as I 
have any power, is the present aim. 

God is either supreme or subject. If subject, then 
I become an Atheist at once, for a subject God is no 
God. If He has passed over the line of my life to the 
control of a law, or a series of laws, then, so far as I 
am concerned, He is dethroned. If any law of the 
universe stands between me and the direct ministry of 
God to my wants and my worthy wishes and aspira- . 
tions, then I may as well pray to my next door neigh- 
bor as to Him. Thus Providence is to me a question 
which involves the existence of a God. If law is a 
greater and a more powerful thing than He who estab- 
lished it, then, to me, He is practically of no account. 
I live and move and have my being in law, and not in 
Him. I sprang from law, I exist in law, and I am car- 
ried on by law I know not whither. If God pity me, 
He cannot help me. If He would save me, He cannot. 
Between Him and me His law places an impassable 
gulf, across w T hich we may stretch our helpless hands 
toward each other to all eternity without avail. He is 
a prisoner, and I am a prisoner ; and I may legitimate- 
ly pity His weakness as much as he pities mine. 

Again, God is either benevolent in His feelings to- 
ward each individual child in His universe, or He is ut- 
terly indifferent, or positively malicious. We look to 
Him as the author of all things — as the father of our 



Providence. 83 



spirits and the maker of our bodies, no more than as 
the author and founder of all law. If I decide in my 
mind that He has voluntarily placed it out of His power 
to help me, by instituting between me and Him a law 
which shuts Him from direct ministry to me, I decide, 
in effect, that He is indifferent to me, or malicious to- 
ward me. When I decide this, I dethrone Him just as 
essentially as when I decide that He is subject to His 
own law, and helpless in regard to its o]3eration ; for a 
God ^ T ho is either indifferent or malicious has no claim 
upon my fealty or my affection. A God who does not 
love me has no claim upon my love. A God who vol- 
untarily puts it beyond His power to aid me, or do me 
good, puts it equally beyond His power to do me direct 
harm. He is, therefore, nothing to me. 

Thus, if there be not a God of Providence who 
ministers to my daily individual wants, and prescribes 
for me the discipline of my life — a God who hears me 
when I cry to Him, and holds immediate relations w T ith 
every moment of my life, so far as I am concerned, 
there is no God at all. Ah ! but there is a God. Few 
are the men who doubt this, and they are not those 
who would be convinced of their error by argument 
of mine. All healthy souls recognize the existence of 
this Being, and recognize among His attributes utter 
supremacy and infinite benevolence. Now the j)oint 
that I make is this : that the moment we recognize God 



84 Gold-Foil. 



as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving to* 
ward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we ad- 
mit the doctrine of universal and special Providence. 
There is no God, and there can be none, who is not a 
God of Providence. It is only to such a God that we 
can pray. It is only such a God that can, by possibili- 
ty, call out our affections, or hold us to allegiance. 
Every thing that passes under the name of religion be- 
comes a mockery and a delusion the moment we place 
Him behind laws which, like prison-bars, restrain Him 
from all participation in human affairs. 

I know too well that in this thing I am not setting 
up and endeavoring to bring down a man of straw. I 
know many men who are professedly, at least, men of 
prayer, yet who declare in terms that the benefits of 
prayer are only to be looked for in the exercise of 
prayer. They attempt to explain the matter phil- 
osophically. There is something in the humble atti- 
tude of the soul before its Maker, incident to prayer — 
something in confession and the exercise of penitence — 
something in abstraction from worldly and impure 
thoughts — which, really, has the power to do great 
good, and in which reside all the benefits of prayer. 
While I recognize the immediate benefits of prayer as 
a mental and moral exercise, this partial and unworthy 
view of it is to me utterly contemptible. A man on his 
fcnees talking to God as if He could help him, yet be* 



Providence. 85 



Keying that He will not, or cannot, and praying for 
blessings which he has no reason to expect, is a sight 
to be pitied of angels and of men. If this be all of 
prayer, it is an insult to a man, either to ask or com- 
mand him to pray. Low as human dignity is, it would 
be compromised, and, if in any degree sensitive, offend- 
ed, by being forced into attitudes and language which 
are a sham and a lie, for the purpose of securing inci- 
dental results of good. 

No, prayer is not a legitimate, it is not even a de- 
cent and dignified, exercise, unless offered to a God of 
Providence who knows and is interested in all our af- 
fairs, is able to interfere with them and change their 
order through or above law, and is willing to do so, ac- 
cording as xhe motives in which our petitions are based 
show us ready for the reception of the blessings which 
we seek, and He in infinite paternal benevolence is 
ready to bestow. Well, we are commanded to pray 
throughout the Bible. We are promised answers to 
prayer, in no ambiguous language, throughout the, 
Bible. We are taught after what manner to pray, by 
Him who spake as never man spake — Humanity's Great 
Teacher ; and to the truly faithful Christian heart this 
should forever settle the question of Providence. 

There is to me no thought more precious than that 
my Maker is my constant minister, direct and imme- 
diate. There is no thought that would sooner drive 



86 Gold-Foil. 



me mad than that I am in the iron grasp of laws which 
will work out their results within me and around me 
though they tear me in pieces, while the Maker 
of those laws and of me cannot help me, though I cry 
to Him out of the depths of my helplessness and dis- 
tress. A natural law r is only one of the regular rules by 
which> for good purposes, God works. It exists as ' a 
rule only by His constant will; and, in my opinion, 
drawn from every available analogy, He has a myriad 
irregular w T ays of reaching an end to one which is reg- 
ular — ways constantly starting out from new impulses 
born of new motives within Him. The regular way of 
reaching Xew York or Washington is by a certain rail- 
road, but I can reach either city by countless irregular 
w^ays, as circumstances or motives may dictate and 
direct. I may reach either city by other railroads less 
direct, yet having the same termination, as my will may 
decide ; and to confine the supreme will of the universe 
to such regular channels of action as we happen to be 
acquainted with, is to assume that that will is weaker 
than our own. 

I assume, that without a belief in a general and 
special Providence, no man who thinks at all upon the 
subject can be truly happy. We are all breakers of 
law — w r e are a race of law-breakers. The moment the 
mind swings loose from a belief in Providence, it 
plunges helpless and overwhelmed into a wild waste of 



Providence. 



87 



penalties, from which there is and can be no extrication 
while existence endures. What has the history of the 
race been but that of law-breaking ? Yet in spite of 
this — in spite of a violation which has become the 
habit of the world — it lives, and, thank God! pro- 
gresses toward goodness. If law had been left alone 
of God's Providence to work out its own blind ends, 
there would not be a breathing man upon the face of 
the earth to-day. It is for the reason that we live and 
move and have our being in God, and not in law, that 
there rises to Heaven the smoke of a single city, or 
waves upon the hillside the burden of a single culti- 
vated harvest. 

Let no man be deceived by that subtlest of all in- 
fidelities which dethrones a God of Providence. The 
very hairs of our heads are numbered by Him, and not 
even he life of a sparrow that He has made is extin- 
guishev. without His notice. There is not an infant's 
wail, a si/h of anguish, a groan of pain, or a word of 
prayer, breathed in the humblest abode, that He does 
not hear. Over all our struggles and toils He stoops 
with a loving eye, and with a heart anxious that the 
discipline He has established for us may do us good. 
He knows all our doubts and fears ; He rejoices in all 
our worthy hopes and joys. When we kneel He sees 
us ; when we pray He hears. His presence envelopes 
us, His knowledge comprehends us, His power upholds 



88 Gold-Foil. 



us. All law and all being are alike dependent, moment 
by moment, upon Him for existence. The ultimate 
root of every flower that bends beneath its weight of 
dew is planted in His will. It is His breath that 
breaks the bosom of the sea into billows ; it is His smile 
that soothes it into rest. The blue sky that bends over 
us is but the visible image of His loving bosom, holding 
myriad worlds in the infinite depths of its tenderness. 
Ah, let it never be hidden to the eye of faith by the 
showers of blessings which come from it, borne on the 
wings of natural law ! 

I know of no skepticism more fatal to the develop- 
ment of religion in the heart than that which dethrones 
a God of Providence. In vain shall we look for a true 
piety among those who, through absorption in scientific 
pursuits, or devotion to the details of natural law in 
mechanical and similar callings, are brought to the 
deification of law. Law has no love, no pity, no 
mercy, no patience. Law has nothing in it to touch 
our sympathies, or call out our affections. If it have 
power in an indirect way to rouse within us a sense of 
esponsibility for our conduct, it is only to curse us 
with the thought that it has no power to forgive. The 
idea that man can be truly religious, with a God vol- 
untarily bereft of power for good or evil, is simply ab- 
surd. We never find, and w T e never can find, true 
piety in a heart that does not so thoroughly believe in 



Providence. 89 



a God of Providence that it can pray "with an honest- 
faith that God can grant its petition. 

It is well that we have law, that we understand it, 
and that we obey it. Law is essential to our highest 
liberty. It defines the bounds within which we may 
safely be allowed to exercise our wills, and work out 
our destiny. It draws the lines along which we may 
legitimately labor in the develojDment of our powers. 
It reveals the relations which exist between material 
things and ourselves. Law is never to be ignored as 
an important part of the machinery by which its founder 
administers the world's great affairs, but we are never 
to shut God out of it, nor to shut him behind it. It is 
intended that we shall accomplish all through law that 
we can accomplish for ourselves — that we shall earn by 
the use of law all that we can earn for physical suste- 
nance, and our spiritual satisfaction. God gives every 
bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He 
does not unearth the good which the earth contains, 
but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of 
getting it ourselves. 

The time has already come to multitudes of men 
when the providence which orders their lives is a de- 
monstrated reality. There is no tractable soul that 
has, by yielding to the indications of the supreme will, 
and obeying law, worked its way into the light, that 
does not recognize a wisdom and purpose in its life 



90 Gold-Foil. 



and history superior to, and independent of, itself, and 
the laws within and around it. In darkness or light 
this demonstration will ultimately come to all. It shall 
be seen by every soul that the discipline of its life was 
chosen in infinite wisdom as that which was best calcu- 
lated to enlarge and ennoble it, whether it produce the 
desired result or not. To all souls emancipated from 
the clutches of necessity, and clinging with love and 
faith to the hand of the Great Dispenser, life becomes 
a great and glorious thing. They recognize every af- 
fliction, every reverse, every pain, as portions or fea- 
tures oi an infinitely beneficent ministry. Every joy 
that visits them, every hope that cheers them, every 
good that they receive, is a renewed testimony of the 
love in which they are held by Him who has ordered 
their life in the past, and w^ho is pledged by all His 
previous ministry to lead it to its divinest issues. It is 
to this height of human happiness that I would lead the 
blind, mistaken, discontented spirits that grope among 
laws as blind as themselves. Poor orphans ! Happy 
for you is it that your belief, or lack of belief, does not 
,hut out Providence from you, nor hinder its constant 
efforts to bring you to its recognition ! 



£JL 









VIII. 

DOES SENSUALITY PAY? 

" Cent, per cent, do we pay for every vicious indulgence." 
" If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away, but the good re- 
mains ; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away but the evil 
remains. ,, 

" Virtue and happiness are mother and daughter." 

LIFE would appear to be a very dangerous sea, 
judging by the number of wrecks that strew its 
shores — more remarkably unsafe, perhaps, for pleasure 
yachts and such, other fancy craft as may fail to main- 
tain the proper relations between canvas and ballast. 
I know of no object of contemplation more sad than a 
human wreck. I can look upon death when it brings 
release to a happy soul, or even to a miserable body, 
with an emotion akin to satisfaction ; I'can contemplate 
a great calamity, when it involves no stain of honor 
and no loss of character, with equanimity — content that 
the hand of Providence is in it 3 and that good must 



92 Gold-Foil. 



consequently come out of it ; I can read of great con- 
flicts upon the battle-field, where the atmosphere is 
burdened by expiring life, and blood flows in rivers, 
and rise from the picture inspired by its heroisms ; but 
I cannot look upon a human wreck, a lost life, a ruined 
man or woman, without being sick with horror, or sad- 
dened into an unspeakable pity. To think of youth's 
bright hopes and precious innocence — of love of truth 
and purity — of honor, and manhood, and womanhood — 
of genius and talent- — of all goodly gifts of person and 
graces of mind — of all sweet affections and aspirations 
gone down — down into the abyss of perdition, blotted 
out or spoiled — ah, this is, by awful eminence, the hor- 
ror of the world ! 

Yet visions of ruined men and women are not un- 
common. We walk out into the world on some pleas- 
ant day, every thing fair and fresh around us, and, 
with health in our blood and peace in our hearts, we 
think how good and beautiful a thing life is ; yet we 
rarely walk far without meeting some one to whom all 
its goodness and beauty are lost. We meet some 
wretch whose haggard face and feeble limbs and fetid 
breath betray the victim of debauchery, dying by his 
last foul disease. Behind him walks the bloated form 
of one who has surrendered his will to his appetite. 
His bloodshot, meaningless eyes, and heavy, staggering 
feet, give index to the curse which is upon him. We 



Does Senfuality Pay? 93 

turn our eyes away from him with a shudder, but only 
to be greeted by a sight that makes us still more sad. 
We meet a form of beauty — a woman — but the wanton 
grace of her step, the artificial flush upon her cheek, 
the hollow eye and brazen gaze, tell of the prostitution 
or loss of that which seems to us the one angelic ele- 
ment of the world. All these are human wrecks — lost 
lives — men and women who have surrendered all that 
is best in them to that which is basest — men and women 
who have turned their backs upon God and heaven, 
and gone down into a very hell of beastliness. Whence 
and why are these wrecks ? Let us see. 

In the constitution of man — a constitution which 
associates spirit with matter by marvellous marriage 
of organisms, and intimately interchanging sympathies, 
and subtle interdependences — the Creator has so con- 
structed the body that it shall convey to the mind, for 
its comprehension, the properties and qualities of ma- 
terial things. These properties and qualities are com- 
municated by and through the senses, and these senses 
are so constituted as, in their exercise and office, to 
affect us by pleasure or by pain. Chiefly the office of 
the senses is that of conveying pleasure. For the sense 
of smell, the vital alchemy at work in the flowers elab- 
orates an infinite variety of perfumes. For the sense 
of taste, the food is prepared in meats and fruits and 
grains of an infinite variety of flavors. The auditory 



94 Gold-Foil. 



sense is regaled by birds and brooks, by instruments 
which the cunning hand of man has made, and by that 
greatest of all instruments, the human voice. Light 
ministers to the pleasure of vision, reflected by number- 
less forms of beauty. In fact, there is no pathway that 
leads into the penetralia of our natures, and gives pas- 
sage to the comprehension of the good things of God, 
that does not absorb something of the divine aroma of 
that which it bears. The process of eating, by which 
we prepare for deglutition the food necessary for our 
support, is a process of pleasure. We do not gorge 
our food like the anaconda, impelled by a bald and 
beastly greed ; but its qualities please our senses. 

Now, so long as these senses are kept to their appro- 
priate ministry — always a subordinate one, in that they 
deal entirely with the qualities and properties of mat- 
ter — so long will it be well with the soul to which they 
minister ; but whenever the soul turns to them as the 
source of its highest pleasures, and seeks for the multi- 
plication and intension of those pleasures as the great 
end of its life, then the whole being is prostituted, and 
absolute, unmixed evil is the natural and inevitable re- 
sult. There is no law in the universe more certain in 
its operation than that which punishes sensuality. The 
man who makes a god of his belly feels the result in an 
unwieldy, gouty frame and a stupid brain. The man 
who delights in the intoxication of his senses by the use 



Does Seniuality Pay? 



95 



of stimulants, wears them out, and poisons, even to 
their death, both body and soul. The man and the 
woman who seek, by the gratification of desires un- 
chastened by love and unwarranted by law, to filch 
from a heaven-ordained relation the delights of its hal- 
lowed commerce, and give themselves up to this form 
of sensuality, never fail to win to themselves moral 
corruption or induration, and bodily imbecility and dis- 
ease. At the gate of this garden of sensual pleasure 
the angel stands with his sword of flame, and no man 
enters unsmitten of him. In the path of sensuality, in 
all its multiplied forms, God has placed barriers moun- 
tain-high, to stop men, and frighten them back from 
the certain degradation and destruction to which it 
leads. The path to life is in the opposite direc- 
tion. 

I have said thus much upon the philosophy of the 
prostitution of the soul to sense, that I might the more 
readily reach the convictions of a generation which, ac- 
tive as it is in intellectual and Christian development, 
has stronger tendencies to sensuality than any of its 
predecessors in this country. As wealth increases in 
any country, the tendencies to sensuality, through the 
temptations of idleness and the growth of the means of 
gratification, always increase. The history of national 
decline and downfall is but a detail of the effects of sen- 
suality. The elevation of style in living beyond a cer- 



96 Gold-Foil. 



tain point, always impinges on the sensual. Beyond 
this point, that which we call luxury commences, and 
luxury is but sensuality refined. In this country we are 
all seeking for luxury ; and those who cannot afford it, 
associated with homes, home pleasures, and home re- 
straints, embrace such forms of sensual gratification as 
come within their means to purchase. Men who are 
poor, look on w T ith envy, and are seeking on every side, 
in new philosophies and systems, and phases of religion, 
for the license which shall give them more of sense 
with smaller drafts on conscience. As the free spirit 
of the age breaks away from bondage to old ideas, old 
bigotries, and old superstitions, it goes wild, and in its 
newly-found liberty runs daringly and blindly into for- 
bidden fields. The free-love doctrines and free-love 
practices of the day, the multiplication of cases of di- 
vorce, and the shameful infidelities that prevail, are all 
indications of the sensual tendencies of the age. 

Where penalty succeeds so poorly, there may seem 
to be rather poor encouragement for preaching ; but, 
in my opinion, the teachers and preachers of the age 
should direct more of their power against a tendency 
which is doing more to undermine the character of the 
American people than their sateless thirst for gold. 
Even in the general strife for wealth, the desire for 
luxury is largely the motive power. The object kept 
prominently in view is feasting — eye-feasting, ear-feast- 



Does Senfuality Pay? 97 



ing, tongue-feasting, or the feasting of other or of all 
the senses — and this beyond natural desire, and with 
the wish and intent to coax from the organs of sense 
more of pleasure than they can afford with health to 
themselves and the souls to which they minister. 

Now, my opinion is, that to a man, or a body of 
men, prostituted or in process of prostitution to sense, 
there is very little use in talking of religion or morals. 
Those are motives which they do not understand. So 
I address myself to the selfishness of the age, as a motive, 
the strength of which may not be questioned, and bid 
it withdraw its hand from this fire on pain of losing it. 
" Cent, per cent, do we pay for every vicious indul- 
gence," says the proverb ; but it is too moderate by 
half in its estimate of expense, for a youth of sensual 
pleasure can never compensate* for a life of pain. If 
you do not believe this, ask the debauchee whose senses 
and sensibilities were long since burned to ashes. Seek 
further testimony, if you will, of her whose brief life 
of sensuality is closed by abandonment; or of him 
whose gluttony has made him a disgustingly bulky bun- 
dle of ailments, or of him whose nerves shiver with the 
poison on which they live. If you say that I am deal 
ing with extremes, without analogies to yourselves, re- 
tire into your own consciousness, and question what 
you find there — old sins of sense that start up and fill 
you with remorse and fear— old wounds of conscience 
5 



98 Gold-Foil. 



gaping and bleeding still — old fractures of character 
that refuse to unite, and make you shudder at your own 
weakness — old stains upon your purity that memory 
will not allow to fade. This process will prove to any 
man of ordinary weakness, who has been subjected to 
ordinary temptations, that never, in a single instance, 
has he indulged in an unlawful sensual pleasure without 
paying for it a thousand times in pain. 

The universal fact, based in universal experience, is, 
that there is nothing in the world that makes so poor a 
return for its cost as sensual pleasure. No man ever 
traded extensively in this line without becoming a bank- 
rupt in happiness. It does not pay, and cannot be made 
to pay, and every man would see and understand this 
if he would keep an acqount of his receipts and expen- 
ditures. Let me help you to open a book of this kind. 
Credit sensual pleasure for a spree — a night of hilarity, 
produced by drinking and feasting ; and then turn to 
the other side of the account, and debit it with the de- 
tails of cost — money enough to furnish bread for a hun- 
dred hungry mouths ; a day of languor, pain, and in- 
dolence; a damaged reputation which may interfere 
with the projects and prospects of a whole life ; a loss 
of self-respect, and a deadening of moral sensibility ; a 
reduction of the capacity of enjoyment and of the stock 
of vitality ; the sullen pangs of a reproving conscience; 
the tears of a mother and the severer anguish of a 



Does Senfuality Pay ? 99 

father, — all these, and more, for an honr of artificial in- 
sanity ! How does the account look ? 

Suppose we try another : Credit Sensual Pleasure 
for the illicit indulgence of a powerful passion. Then 
place the cost upon the debit side of the ledger : shame 
and fear, conscious loss of purity, the possession of a 
foul secret that is to be carried into all society, and into 
all relationships, disease and remorse, or, what is more 
than all these, hardness, brutality, and the formation of 
habits whose only end is ruin. I may not, through fear 
of giving offence, enter into all the details of the debit 
side of this account. They may be found and read of 
all men in graveyards, in hospitals, in brothels, in gar- 
rets, and cellars, in ruined families, and ruined hearts 
and hopes. Xow does this thing pay? 

I have presented only the private side of this ac 
count, and that but imperfectly. There is a public 
side. The innumerable paupers, whose life is supported 
by the State, owe their pauperism, directly or remote- 
ly, in three cases out of four, to sensuality — to strong 
drink, licentiousness, or some form of extravagance that 
proceeded from a devotion to sensual pleasure. Idiots 
begotten in drunkenness, lunatics through various forms 
of sensual vice, criminals who are caged in every jail 
and prison like wild beasts, diseased creatures, alike 
loathsome to themselves and others, crowded into num- 
berless pestilent hospitals, — all these are public burdens, 



100 Gold-Foil. 



imposed by the sins of sensuality. If we run through 
the whole catalogue of crimes, we shall find them all 
growing directly or indirectly out of this comprehen- 
sive vice. In fact, it may be said that all crime, with 
all its consequences, is but a manifestation of the dom- 
inance of sense over reason and conscience. 

In this view — and no one knows better than its vic- 
tims that it is the correct view — Sensuality rises into 
the position of the grand scourge of mankind. It is 
the mother of disease, the nurse of crime, the burden 
of taxation, and the destroyer of souls. Oh, if the 
world could rise out of this swamp of sensuality, rank 
with weeds and dank with deadly vapors — full of vipers, 
thick with pitfalls, and lurid with deceptive lights, and 
stand upon the secure heights of virtue where God's 
sun shines, and the winds of heaven breathe blandly 
and healthfully, how would human life become blessed 
and beautiful ! The great burden of the world rolled 
off, how would it spring forward into a grand career of 
prosperity and progress ! This change, for this coun- 
try, rests almost entirely with the young men of the 
country. It lies with them more than any other class, 
and more than all other classes, to say whether this 
country shall descend still lower in its path to brutali- 
ty, or rise higher than the standard of its loftiest 
dreams. The devotees of sense, themselves, have 
greatly lost their power for good, and comparatively 



Does Senfuality Pay ? 



101 



few will change their course of life. Woman will be 
pure if man will be true. Young men, this great re- 
sult abides with you. . If you could but see how beau- 
tiful a flower grows upon the thorny stalk of self-de- 
nial, you would give the plant the honor it deserves. 
If it seem hard and homely, despise it not, for in it 
sleeps the beauty of heaven and the breath of angels. 
If you do not witness the glory of its blossoming dur- 
ing the day of life, its petals will open when the night 
of death comes, and gladden your closing eyes with 
their marvellous loveliness, and fill your soul with their 
grateful perfume. 




IX. 



THE WAY TO GROW OLD. 

" Good morrow, glasses ! Farewell lasses !" 
" All wish to live long, but none to be called old." 
" Every dog has his day." 
" A hundred years hence we shall all be bald." 

" If you would not live to be old, you must be hanged when you are 
young." 



F we except the Chinese, (who have a remarkable 
talent for being exceptions to general rules,) all 
men and women make an idol of youth. Manhood in 
its fresh embodiment — healthful, strong, and majestic — 
and womanhood in its rosy morning — fragrant with 
sweet thoughts and hopes, and radiant in its dewy beauty 
— attract the love and admiration of all — perhaps even 
the envy of many. Childhood looks up to them, and 
longs to grow to their estate. Old age regards the 
memory of them with a sigh, and rarely fails to find in 
them its most congenial society. We walk to our mir- 



The Way to grow old. 103 

rors, and scan with gathering sadness the lines that the 
graver of care has traced, and pluck from our temples, 
with unhappy surprise, the first stark threads of silver 
that Time slips through our chance-thrown locks, or in- 
lays upon their plaited black and brown ; yet " we feel 
as young as we ever did." We are not estranged from 
the young, but stand among them with strong hands 
and hearts, unable to realize that they look upon us as 
men and women who are " getting considerably along 
in the world." The cheek and lip of Beauty, her 
sparkling eyes, and plump outline, and graceful and 
elastic step, touch us with the same thrill of pleasure 
that they did in the early days of sympathy and pas- 
sion. Youth — ah! Beautiful Gate of the Temple of 
Life ! It matters little how gorgeous the temple may 
be when entered, — how majestic the arches, how long 
the vista, how richly illuminated and emblazoned the 
windows, or how heavenly the music that thrills its iris- 
tinted silences, — we never forget the precious moments 
spent in lingering at the portal, the glorious rosette 
above it, and the sky-born melody of the chimes that 
filled our ears and hearts with welcome. 

Our life's ideal is always filled with the blood and 
breath of youth. Our finest conceptions of human 
beauty evermore embrace youth as their prime ele- 
ment. Strength, enthusiasm, hope, purity, love, — all 
these when combined and embodied in their most at- 



104 Gold-Foil. 



tractive forms, rise in our imaginations as youthful at- 
tributes. So true is this, that in looking forward to the 
day when the dust of those who have gone before us 
into the land of spirits shall rise, and assume the forma 
they are to wear in the celestial city, there springs up 
always a vision of their youth. We expect to meet the 
tottering father whose eyes we closed, and w r hose 
wasted and feeble limbs we composed, as young, and 
fresh, and strong as when he bore us to the baptismal 
font. There are to be no thin, silvery curls upon the 
brow of the mother, but in some sweet way, all the hal- 
lowed graces of maternity and the unfathomable ten- 
derness of a soul disciplined by sorrow are to be asso- 
ciated — interfused- — wdth the beauty and the youth of 
the bride. Immortality — twin-sister of Eternity — is 
always young, and brings no thought of age and decay. 
An angel with a wrinkle ? A cherub with a feeble or a 
weary wing ? We cannot imagine such beings. Heaven 
and everlasting youth are inseparable thoughts. 

So it is that the first consciousness we have of grow- 
ing old comes to us with a pang. There seems to be 
something unnatural in it. We feel the soul within us 
expanding, and know that its vision is clearer, its power 
greater, and its capacity for happiness diviner, yet the 
body in which this soul lives shows signs of decay. 
There is an increasing incompatibility between the 
tenant and the tenement. Some people feel so badly 



The Way to grow old. 105 



about it that they undertake to repair the old taber- 
nacle—to put in porcelain teeth, and dye their hair, 
and don artificial curls, and put on feathers and finery. 
It is all a pretty little device, and harmless, because it 
cheats nobody, and really makes the world better 
looking. And this brings me to what I desire to say 
touching the duty of growing old gracefully and 
happily. 

There is a homely kind of philosophy that will help 
those who are not up to any thing higher. The alterna- 
tive of growing old is dying young. The only way to 
keep hair from becoming gray is to have it clipped off 
as a memento of a departed man, or laid away to decay 
with him. Wrinkles are either to be made out in 
God's sunlight, among living things, by the hand of 
Time, or by worms working in the dark. I take it 
that there is an easy choice between these two evils, 
and that whatever the evidences may be that God has 
answered our wishes — whether gray hairs, or feeble 
knees, or dull sight — we should regard them with 
gratitude. 

Again, keeping alive our sympathy with the race 
to which we belong, and manfully willing to take our 
chance with the rest, we should, remember that when 
we perceive the signs of age upon ourselves, we have 
enjoyed our own single term of youth, like all men 
who have gone before us, and that those who come 
5* 



106 Gold-Foil. 



after us will have no more. Every dog has his day, 
Those who are young to-day, and who are doubtless 
the subjects of envy to some of us, will be old to- 
morrow. They are enjoying the day we have already 
enjoyed, and will soon reach the point where we are 
standing. It is an even thing ; and it compromises all 
that is unselfish and chivalrous within us to wish for a 
better lot in this respect than is meted out to the rest 
of the great brotherhood of men. Still again, if we 
find the evidences of age creeping upon us, we cannot 
avoid their further encroachment except by committing 
suicide ; and this would be a very bad alternative. 
What we cannot help, we must bear ; and it is for our 
interest to bear it cheerfully. It is very pleasant to 
be young, but as the body can only be young once, the 
next best thing is to have the privilege of growing old. 
We are to remember that if we look back with regret 
to the period we have passed, the young are looking 
forward with hope that they may reach the period at 
which Ave have arrived. They may not like to be 
called old, but they all wish to live long. 

But there is a better point than this from which to 
regard this matter. To go back to our theory that 
every thing immortal in its nature is, by necessity of 
that nature, young, I make the proposition that the 
secret of growing old gracefully and happily resides in 
the comprehension of this fact, and in the institution 



The Way to grow old. 107 

of such measures as may be necessary to keep a decay, 
ing body from infecting or injuring in any way the 
soul's health while attached to it. No man on God's 
footstool feels old, or realizes that he is old, whose soul 
has not been improperly affected by his body. The 
feeling of age in the mind is like the effect upon life of 
being in an old, damp house, dingy with dirt and reek- 
ing with rottenness, — more perhaps like the effect of 
the close, bed-fellow association of age and infancy — 
the former drawing off the vital forces of the latter, 
and imparting to it the taint of its diseases. There is 
no such thing as an old soul in the universe, but there 
are a great many diseased or depressed souls — diseased 
or depressed by a great variety of causes, prominent 
among which is the decay of the bodies which they 
inhabit. 

The natural idolatry exercised by the old for the 
young, though owing greatly to the unpleasant associa- 
tions of age, has a deeper meaning in it than we have 
generally comprehended. God turns our hearts toward 
the young that the influence of youth upon them may 
be a power conservative of their health, and preventive 
of the depressing influence of bodily age. It is a part 
of the beautiful ministry of children to preserve unin 
jured by the passage of time the souls of those with 
whom thev are associated : and in the general rule of 
life the Good Father provides children for those who 



108 Gold-Foil. 



live to middle age, and when those are grown up, He 
gives them grand-children, so that they shall never be 
without this beneficent influence. Those who remain 
unmarried, or are not blest with children, grow old in 
feeling as they grow old in years, from the lack of this 
influence upon them, though there are exceptions to 
this rule — the exceptions illustrating the principle even 
better or more forcibly than the general rule itself. 
There are some among the childless old who are pas- 
sionately fond of children, and I have never known 
such men and women who were not genial, sunny, and 
young in feeling. They seem instinctively to turn to 
children for that influence, whatever it may be, which 
will preserve their souls from the depressing power of 
age. I make the broad proposition that there is not 
an old man or woman living, at this moment in close 
sympathy with the hearts and minds of children and 
youth, who feels the influence upon his or her soul of a 
decaying body. 

The springs of the soul's life abide in the affections- 
If these are properly fed, either by love of the young, 
or by love in its higher and stronger manifestations, 
they mount into perennial youth. Next above the 
love of the young — special or universal — comes con- 
nubial love, as a conservator of the youthful feeling of 
the soul. Two married hearts that came together in 
early life, and have lived in the harmony and love 



The Way to grow old. 109 

which constitute real marriage, never grow old. The 
love they bear to one another is an immortal thing. 
It is as fond and tender as it was when they pledged 
their faith to each other at the altar. Such a love as 
this can rise from no other than an immortal fountain. 
The fires of passion may die, desire may burn out like 
a candle, yet chastened and purified, this love — a 
product of essential youth — becomes the conservator 
of youth. The pine produces its resin, and the resin 
preserves the pine from decay, centuries after the life 
that produced it has passed away. The little spring 
that bursts up from where nature prepares her waters 
for the healing of the nations, deposits for itself- a wall 
which shuts out all impurities, and keeps it always 
sparkling and young. 

Above this love — better than this and every other 
love— is the love of the soul for the Father Soul— the 
sympathy of that which is immortal in it for Him from 
whom it came. The man who comprehends his rela- 
tion to this Being, and whose heart goes out toward 
Him in true filial affection, knows that age is only a 
word, and that it has no more relation to his soul than 
it has to God himself. God is doubtless intimately as- 
sociated with this material universe. It is blent with 
all His plans. It is the organ in multitudinous methods 
of His thought. In many ways it is the means by 
which He manifests His will, so that, in a certain sense, 



110 Gold-Foil. 



we may regard it as a body of which He is the resident 
and president soul. Yet this universe is to wax old 
like a garment. It is to fade like our own bodies ; but 
no one supposes that the old age of the universe will 
touch the immortal youth of its Maker. The extin- 
guishment of one of the lamps that He has hung out in 
space brings no shadow upon His brow. The wreck 
of a sidereal system works no weakness in His arm. 
"Wrapped in the aura of His own ineffable love, He 
lives ; and because He lives, we shall live also ; be- 
cause He is immortally young shall we also be immor- 
tally young ; because no organized material system, 
however intimately associated with Him, can affect, by 
its decay and wreck, the fountain of His life, the decay 
of our bodies, if we are like Him, and live in the same 
atmosphere of love, will not affect us, either in fact or 
feeling. 

A man who lives wrapped in this atmosphere of 
love — love of children, love of a bosom companion, 
love of men, love of God — imparts to his decaying 
body something of the youth of the spirit within. As 
the body may and does affect the spirit when no coun- 
teracting agencies prevent, so does the spirit act upon 
the body as a preservative power when in its normal 
condition and exercise. Many an old man's and wo- 
man's face have I seen luminous with the fires of youth, 
outshining from the soul. The cloo;s are lifted from 



The Way to grow old. Ill 



the mortal when the soul comes into sympathy with 
this element of immortality. The love that gushes for 
all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily 
longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces 
the feeling of age. Upon a soul not filled and exercised 
by love, the decaying body encroaches with its weak- 
ness and poison, till the belief of many in the immor- 
tality of the soul — a soul independent of matter — be- 
comes uprooted. 

Whenever men or women find themselves losing 
their sympathy with youthful hearts and pursuits, they 
may be sure that something is wrong with them ; for it 
is not in the nature of the soul to grow old. It may 
grow in height, and depth, and breadth, and power, 
but the passage of years can bring it no decay. Con- 
sequently, all those who feel themselves dissonances in 
the song which the young life around them is singing, 
are allowing their bodies to do their souls damage. I 
believe that every healthy old saint in Christendom 
finds his heart going out more and more towards the 
young. As his evening sun descends, and heaven 
grows glorious while the shadows gather upon the 
earth, he loves more and more to gather around him 
that which is essentially heavenly — young men and 
maidens, and the bright forms and innocent faces of 
children. Prepared for heaven, it is only in such socie- 
ty and that which sympathizes with it, that he finds his 



112 Gold-Foil. 



heart at home. I believe that social life, in all its 
healthful manifestations, is that which combines all 
ages— which brings youth and middle age together 
with old age and childhood. Every age needs the in- 
fluence of every other age to keep it healthful. There 
is no such thing as age with those who, in a few years 
at most, will be as the angels in heaven. As we shall 
be, and as w T e shall associate, there, so should we be, 
and so should we associate here; and let this truth 
never fail to be remembered : that unless the aged sym- 
pathize with the young, they will get no sympathy, save 
in the form of pity, from the young. God does not 
send young sympathies in that direction. He always 
holds us back with them, while our bodies go on to decay 
and death, and we forget, in immortal youth, that we 
were ever old. 



^r 




X. 



ALMSGIVING. 

;; Give and spend, 
And God will send." 
" Charity and pride have different aims, vet both feed the poor." 
" What the Abbot of Bamba cannot eat, he gives away for the good of hia 
soul." 

K He steals a pig, and gives away the trotters for God's sake." 



I HAVE no idea of absolute property but that which, 
is born of absolute creation by an independent, 
self-existent power. There is but one genuine proprie- 
tor in the universe, and that proprietor is its Maker. 
All that we call ours — all that w r e w 7 in by toil, and are 
allowed to hold, for our use and at our disposal, by the 
laws of civil society — was made and is owned by Him 
who made and owns us. The mite that makes a home 
for itself in our cheese does not, by the processes of 
burrowing and feeding, institute a claim to proper- 
ty in the cheese. The robin that builds a nest in our 
maple, from materials selected upon our land, cannot be 



114 Gold-Foil. 



said to own the tree, if we have a purpose for it that 
interferes with her nest. That God is the grand pro- 
prietor must be received as a cardinal, vital fact by all 
who do not deny the existence of God himself. It is 
not for me to declare to the world the manner in which 
He regards this portion of His property; but I cannot 
help thinking that He looks upon it as a great mansion 
which He has taken infinite pains to construct for the 
shelter and support of a family of children in whom He 
takes infinite interest. These continents of verdure, 
this great and wide sea, swinging like a pendulum be- 
tween its shores, overhung by the moon's mysterious 
dial, these rivers, nursed in their crystal infancy at the 
bosoms of these motherly hills and mountains, this 
downy atmosphere, that feeds our breath* and fans our 
brows, and springs over us its canopy of blue, this won- 
derful variety of animal life, that rejoices in forest wilder- 
nesses and smooth pastures, and swims in the sea and 
floats upon the air — all these were made and are sup- 
ported by His power, for the benefit of the intelligent 
creatures w T hom He has placed among them, 

Now, if we have any thing like ownership in these 
things, this ownership has its basis in God's beneficence. 
If we hold any thing by right, for our special use, and 
at our disposal, we hold it as a gift of God, and as a 
temporary gift. We are allowed to use these things 
for a time ; and then Ave pass away, and they are trans- 



Almsgiving. 115 



ferred to the possession of others. Not unfrequently 
they are taken from us while we live. The patient Man 
of Uz exhibited his idea of property — the true idea — 
in the familiar w^ords, " The Lord gave, and the Lord 
hath taken away." In making this world, the Creator 
furnished it with all the materials necessary for the sup- 
port of His entire human family. For the best devel- 
opment of our minds and bodies, He made it necessary 
for us to labor, so that, by moulding the agencies and 
recombining the materials He permits us to use, we 
may secure that which is necessary for our sustenance 
and shelter. He knew that some would be able to se- 
cure more than enough for sustenance and shelter, and 
that others would not be able to secure enough, yet He 
did not intend that any should lack food and clothing, 
or any of the essentials of healthful bodily and mental 
life. He knew, and, I verily believe, intended, that some 
should be poor and that others should be rich ; and 
thus instituted the emergency for human beneficence or 
charity. It is better, on the whole, that the world 
should be made up of benefactors and beneficiaries 
than that each man should be independent of every 
other man. 

Thus, every man w T hom He has made, or whom He 
has allowed to become, rich, He has by that favor com- 
missioned to be an almoner of His bounty to those whom 
He has not thus favored. The sick, the helpless, the 



116 



Gold-Foil. 



utterly poor through misfortune — these are always with 
us. The Saviour Himself stated this as a fact good for 
all time ; and I know of no man who dares to deny 
that these unfortunate ones have an absolute right to 
live, and, consequently, a right to so much of the prop- 
erty of others as may be necessary to support them. 
The pauper systems established by all Christian states 
have their basis in the absolute right of the helpless to 
aid at the hand of society. If you, who read these 
words, are rich, you recognize, every time you pay a 
tax for the comfort and support of those who can do 
nothing or little for themselves, the fact, that a portion 
of your wealth, at least, belongs to somebody else. 
Whether you recognize it or not, the fact is the same. 
What we call State charities, are essentially State equi- 
ties. The lunatic asylums, the pauper establishments, 
the hospitals, the reform schools, all grow out of the 
duty which the element of wealth in society owes to 
the element of weakness. 

But the State is a great body, and moves clumsily. 
There are countless fields of beneficent or charitable 
effort and privilege to which its operations are not 
fitted. There is a great' amount of work which it 
neither can do, nor should do ; and precisely here arise 
the duties of individual wealth to individual want — of 
individual wealth to the need of the world for food, rai- 
ment, Christian light, educational and religious institu- 



Almsgiving. 117 



tions, and almost numberless schemes of public good. 
If, in the economy of Heaven, there exist the necessity 
of institutions and schemes for private and public good 
which are manifestly outside of the legitimate sphere of 
the State — institutions and schemes which can only be 
established by the contributions of wealth — it is as if 
God had laid His finger upon every rich man's purse, 
and pronounced the word, " Give ! " What do you 
think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to 
satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around 
and see how many are in absolute need of that which 
you do not need ? Can you not take the hint ? 

Men may give from a compassionate, or generous 
impulse — from a momentary excitement of their sym- 
pathies — and very much is given in this way, without 
doubt. I will not quarrel with this variety of charity ; 
but I believe that a genuine spirit of beneficence can 
be exercised by no mind that does not recognize all the 
wealth it enjoys as the gift of God, to be shared with 
the children of penury, or devoted to institutions that 
contemplate the general good. God is the giver, life a 
partnership, humanity a brotherhood. The selfish ac- 
cumulation, and sequestration from society of super- 
fluous good, is at war with the economy of the Uni- 
verse. Every thing in nature tends to equilibrium, and 
the universal compensation of expenditure. The rill 
takes the gift of the mountain spring and passes it on 



118 Gold-Foil. 



to the brook, and the brook pours the waters it receives 
into the river, and the river bears the burden of its 
gifts to the sea, and heaven itself descends to lift from 
the sea and return in cloud-winged argosies to the 
spring from whence they came the waters which it gave, 
and glorifies the spot by hanging over it the beauty 
of its rainbow. What earth sends up, heaven sends 
down, and what heaven sends down, earth returns. 
Circulation, diffusion, tendency by multiplied methods 
to equilibrium — these are the universal laws of nature. 
It is only man that hoards. It is only man that ac- 
cumulates, and for selfish ends holds imprisoned super- 
fluous good, and refuses to let it go out on its benefi- 
cent mission. 

The charity of the day is, as a general thing, but a 
sorry apology for that beneficence which springs from 
a true apprehension of the primary source of wealth, 
its real ownership, and its legitimate uses. Millions 
have doubtless been given for the gratification of 
pride, and for the purpose of securing the applause of 
the world. If the time ever come when even and ex- 
act justice shall be meted out to the various agencies 
operative in the world toward beneficent results, the 
recipients of charity in its several forms will find them- 
selves largely indebted to the devil. Bread is bread to 
the hungry, and clothing raiment to the naked, and the 
Bible light to the benighted. It does not matter to 



Almsgiving. 119 



the needy from what source a charitable ministry pro- 
ceed. If they are fed and clothed and enlightened, 
they have cause of satisfaction and gratitude, without 
questioning the sources of the good which reaches 
them. 

I suppose that one of the severest trials of a sordid 
man is that which is caused by the disgust he feels in 
the society of his own soul. I once heard a preacher 
remark that were it not for the interposition of sleep, 
by which all men are separated once in twenty-four 
hours from the consciousness of their own meanness, 
they would all die of self-contempt. I judge the state- 
ment to be somewhat broad*, but it holds within it a 
truth which lies at the basis of a moiety, more or less, 
of the charities of wealth. Every man who achieves 
riches by great speculations, by sharp practices, by 
trade which involves operations not altogether honora- 
ble, has his own method of maintainiDg self-compla- 
cency, or self-toleration ; but his efforts usually take 
the form of charity. There is no scoundrel living who 
does not feel obliged to convince himself, in some way, 
that he is as good as the average of mankind. Poor 
scoundrels, who have no more than money enough to 
feed their vices and themselves, depreciate the excel- 
lence of the character about them, and win the self- 
complacency they seek by dragging it down to the dirt 
which defines their own level. Rich scoundrels, find- 



120 Gold-Foil. 

ing themselves respectable as the world goes, naturally 
resort to sacrifices — to throwing out and abandoning 
to the maw of the wolf that follows them some con- 
temptible portion of gains gotten meanly and kept 
foully. Even the highway robber boasts that if he has 
taken from the rich, he has given to the poor. Not 
unfrequently these men, grown rich by doubtful courses, 
become special patrons of the church, or of educational 
institutions. We see them installed in the most ex- 
pensive pews on Sunday, or adorning a select position 
devoted to the annual exhibition of a board of trustees. 
But these are all comparatively tolerable men. 
They do good in the world, and evince a degree of 
sensitiveness which demands more or less of our sym- 
pathy. There is a form of self-conciliation, however, 
which would be laughable were its results less disas- 
trous. Though not laughable, it is really admirable, 
as a specimen of the most perfect type of meanness ; 
for I take it that every thing perfect in its kind is, in a 
sense, admirable. It is exhibited by those who under- 
take to satisfy themselves with themselves by initiating 

ecret schemes of good to go into operation after they 
are dead — schemes which, sooner than establish or 
assist, they would pluck their eyes out, if they were 
expecting to live forever. They are thus enabled to 
gratify their greed for gold — to overreach, exact usury, 

and hoard, and at the same time save themselves from 



Almsgiving. 121 



a crushing self- contempt by contemplating in secret 
the fact that their gains are already devoted to a good 
end ! But the devil never leaves them here. He in- 
duces them to trample under feet the sympathies and 
claims of consanguinity, to cut off with a dirty -shilling 
old servants whose lives have been devoted to them, 
to institute schemes of beneficence impracticable even 
to ludicrousness, or to leave their wills so imperfectly 
drawn as to create quarrels among their natural heirs, 
and destroy the peace and harmony of families that 
will hold their memories fit subjects of execration so 
long as they hold them at all. 

It is time that wealth in nominally Christian hajids 
were bestowed upon the weak, the needy, and the suf- 
fering, from higher motives than a compassionate im- 
pulse or desire for public applause and private satisfac- 
tion. I know that it is very hard to admit that we do 
not hold our superfluous wealth and superabundant 
means by absolute right — that what we earn by toil or 
win by traffic is not ours to hoard or dispense at our 
pleasure ; but if we are really and truly owners of what 
we possess, then beneficence is no duty, It is simply a 
favor shown to God through care for His unfortunate 
children, for which He owes us either adequate com- 
pensation or appropriate gratitude. The simple truth 
is, that in the degree by which a man's wealth is in- 
creased, is bis family enlarged. Over against every 
6 



122 Gold-Foil. 



pile of superfluous dollars, God places a pile of 
needs. 

I account the office of benefactor, or almoner, to 
which God appoints all those whom he has favored 
with wealth, one of the most honorable and delightful 
in the world. He never institutes a channel for the 
passage of His bounties that those bounties do not en- 
rich and beautify. The barren moor that parts before 
the steel of the mountain brook betrays the furrow by 
a fresher green and rarer flowers. Noble cities and all 
forms of beautiful life mirror themselves in rivers that 
become highways for the passage of commerce. God 
gives leaves to every stalk that bears juices up to the 
growing fruit, and presents a flower in advance to 
every twig that elaborates a seed. The sky weaves 
radiant garlands for itself from the clouds to which 
it gives transportation. So every man who becomes 
heartily and understandingly a channel of the divine 
beneficence, is enriched through every league of his 
life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within 
him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and 
gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodi- 
ous gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by 
the melodious waves of the recipient stream. 

We need at this period of the Christian develop- 
ment a more thorough recognition of the great truths 
I have endeavored to reveal. Churches are crippled 



Almsgiving. 123 



with debt, or languish for efficient support. Educa- 
tional institutions are begging for aid to enable them 
to meet the wants of the time. Missions encroach but 
feebly upon the domains of superstition and ignorance. 
The people are unsupplied with good public libraries. 
Hundreds of thousands of helpless children are growing 
up ignorant and vicious. Sickness and want are ever- 
more around us. Need in a thousand forms cries for 
aid by a thousand voices ; and while there is wealth 
enough in Christendom to satisfy this cry, and the cry 
remains unsatisfied, there will remain wrongfully with- 
held from its appropriate use the wealth God has sent 
to satisfy it. So open your hands, ye whose hands are 
full ! The world is waiting for you ! Heaven is wait- 
ing for you ! The whole machinery of the divine 
beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid 
fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will 
send ; for only in giving and spending do you fulfil the 
object of His sending. 




XI. 



THE LOYE OF WHAT IS OURS. 



her." 



4 There is one good wife in the country, and every man thinks he hath 

'* Every bird likes its own nest the best." 

■' Every man thinks that his own geese are swans." 



WHENEVER that becomes a personal posses- 
sion which is legitimately an object of love, 
and which involves one's character for good taste, 
sound judgment, and personal power or prowess, its 
value, in the eye and heart of its possessor, is raised 
above the estimate and appreciation of other minds. 
If we select a horse for certain points of organization, 
and certain characteristics of temper and training, and 
purchase him, we feel that, to a certain extent, that 
horse's reputation is a part of our own. We identify 
ourselves with the animal. If he trot a mile in three 
minutes, we are proud, as if the fact were in some way 



The Love of what is ours. 125 

creditable to us. If he can travel eighty miles in a 
day, and continue it, we feel as if the fact were a com- 
pliment to ourselves. We see grandeur in the carriage 
of his head, and grace in the movements of his limbs, 
that no one else sees. So we look over our dwelling, 
in the arrangement and furniture of which we have ex- 
pressed our best ideas of home, or into our garden, 
whic^ is as we made it, and their harmony and beauty 
impress us as they impress no others. Our friends pass 
both without a thought, perhaps, or they give them a 
quiet compliment that means but little. Our dog may 
be a very ugly brute, but we own him, and do not like 
to hear his ugliness alluded to. We are complimented 
in the admiration bestowed upon the prints and paint- 
ings which adorn the walls of our parlors, quite as much 
as if we had made them ourselves. There are number- 
less beautiful and good and graceful women in the 
world, but that one of the number which has been the 
subject of our choice, and the mother of our children, 
is a little better than any other, although, for reasons 
best known to the world, we may not be the objects of 
any man's envy. 

So it is that each man has bread to eat that 
the world knows not of. So it is that each man is 
richer than the world estimates him to be. There 
is more than one sense in which no man makes an 
honest return of his property to the assessors of 



126 Gold-Foil. 



taxes. All those objects of possession into which we 
have cast our thought, or which have come to us by a 
purchase involving choice and the exercise of taste and 
judgment, become partakers of our own life — a part of 
ourselves and of our own personal value. We identify all 
our productions with ourselves. We have a private 
opinion of all our literary children that no one else en- 
tertains, particularly if they are abused. Even our 
opinions upon the m6st important subjects are so recog- 
nized by us as a personal possession that we cannot sep- 
arate them from our personality. It is for this reason 
that political and religious conflicts are so bitter. Men 
do not get angry because an opinion is attacked, but 
because they feel themselves attacked with any opinion 
which they hold. Their conscience, judgment, taste — 
every thing in them that joined in the formation or 
choice of an opinion — is affronted with the attack upon 
the opinion itself. This is the secret of the great ma- 
jority of the personalities and bitternesses that grow 
out of the high conflicts of opinion in the world. There 
is nothing to quarrel over and get excited about in an 
opinion, any more than in a potato, if it do not happen 
to belong to us. It is amusing to see the indifference 
with which a man will regard a public attack on-an 
opinion which he has not accepted, and the excitement 
he will manifest when some cherished notion of his own 
is assailed. 



The Love of what is ours. 127 



Now, when I find a law like this running through 
all mankind — a law which has none but good effects 
when held within legitimate limits of operation — I 
know that it means something. Such laws are never 
instituted for nothing. God's benevolence is in them 
somewhere — that we may be sure of — and it becomes 
our pleasant task to find it. 

The first benevolent design that shows itself to us 
in this law and its operation is that of making men con- 
tented and happy. If each man feel that he has got 
the best wife in the world, the brightest and prettiest 
children, the finest horse, the cleverest dog, the most 
convenient and tasteful home, the soundest opinions in 
politics and religion — that all which he possesses has 
advantages apparent enough to himself over the posses- 
sions of his neighbors — it is that he may be happy and 
contented in them. Every man may see in the peculiar 
pleasures which he derives from his possessions a pro- 
vision of God for his special individuality — things in na- 
ture and art that answer with single and special intent 
to his judgment and taste, and the peculiar wants of 
his nature. The value that he places upon these things 
is not fictitious. They hold relations to him — to his 
nature and his wants — that they hold to no one else, 
and that no other things hold to him. They are, then, 
in a sense, a part of him. His life passes into them, 
and they pass into his life. He is identified with them, 



128 Gold-Foil. 



and they partake of those primary values which are 
based in each man's need of ministry. ■ 

It is in these things that we are to look for God's 
special manifestations of benevolence to us. We re- 
ceive pleasure from the sunshine and the rain, from the 
stars overhead and the flowers under feet, from ocean 
and air, from sea and sky ; — all these, in fact, are pos- 
sessions — but they come to us, or are held, in common 
with all of our race. We are not proud of them. We 
do not point to the sun in vanity, nor do we boast of 
the nebulous silver that sheets the milky way. From 
the general ministry of God to the wants of the race 
we get no idea of His special provision for us. We see 
benevolence in it, but it is not meant particularly for 
ourselves. We find ourselves different from other men, 
and we find specially prepared for us those objects that 
arrange themselves with delightful relations around our 
individualities. It is not strange that they appear more 
valuable to us than to others, for they are, in fact, more 
valuable to us than to others. My friend loves devoted- 
ly a woman whom I, and perhaps no one else, could 
ever love at all, or love so well, and that wife is God's 
expression of special benevolence toward him. So is 
every thing which, among his possessions, has a special 
value in his eyes — a value not apprehended by others. 

If men will examine their lot in this light, they will 
find themselves much richer than they generally sup- 



The Love of what is ours. 129 

pose themselves to be. There is, notwithstanding the 
line of facts which I have developed, abundant discon- 
tent and envy in the world; and every man should look 
into his lot to see whether, on the whole, he would be 
willing to exchange it for that of any other man. Sup- 
pose that each individual who reads this article summon 
before his imagination the individual whose lot he has 
been inclined to envy. Think the matter all over, and 
decide, my friend, whether you would exchange places 
with him. Would you give up your wife, your chil- 
dren, your home, your associations, your sentiments 
and opinions, your friendships, your temptations, and 
your name, for his wife, children, home, associa- 
tions, friendships, sentiments, opinions, temptations, 
and name ? Xo ? Why not ? Ah ! you own something 
too precious to surrender — you possess that wealth 
which is of inestimable value with relation to your own 
peculiar self, and which you cannot afford to exchange 
for any thing else under the sun. ISTow this wealth is 
the measure of God's special expression of love for you, 
and it is given to you to make you contented with your 
lot. Receive it as such, and be happy in it. Identify 
yourself with it. Rejoice in it, for it is something set 
apart by God for you, and is sacred to your use. He 
marries you to every one of these special blessings as 
truly as He marries you to the woman of your choice. 
As the mind advances towards a richer life and no- 
6* 



130 Gold-Foil. 



bier issues, another benevolent intent reveals itself aa 
an end of this law. We dwell now among opinions, 
dogmas, creeds, institutions, conventionalisms, and as 
these lie nearest our life, we identify ourselves with 
them. We fight for them when they are assailed, and 
we are wounded in their destruction. To us they are, 
in certain aspects, the representatives of the will and 
way, the law and life of God ; and it is only in moments 
of inspiration or exaltation that we are able to pass 
through, or by, these representatives, and grasp the 
great realities between which and our weak minds 
they mediate. When the soul can lay its hand on truth 
itself, and appropriate it ; when it can say " my Lord 
and my God ; " w T hen it can enter sympathetically, with 
a rapt appreciation of the greatness and glory of its 
birthright, into the brotherhood of all pure intelli- 
gences ; when, answering to the thrill of the blood of 
the Godhead in its veins, it can say " My Father ;" 
w T hen, w T ith an imagination that ranges the glories of 
the universe, it apprehends an infinite kingdom, and 
sees itself a prince of the reigning house, and feels it- 
self at home, ah ! then it learns, or begins to learn, 
something of a law which, beginning like a rill in its 
humbler experiences, spreads into a river, that sweeps 
it into the ocean of identity with God Himself. 

This is what the world, and especially the Christian 
world, w T ants to-day. It identifies itself with the shell 



The Love of what is ours. 131 



of religion, while it needs identification with the truth, 
with God and His life, with all the things of God. It 
needs to recognize all truth as its property, God and 
His life as its property, and all the things of God as its 
property ; and so to identify itself with this property 
that it shall feel its honor, its name, its all, bound to it 
— indissolubly connected with it. It was out of this 
thorough identification of the soul with God that came 
those pregnant words : " Do not I hate them that hate 
thee ? " It is refreshing, in such a time as this, to look 
back upon the histories of the ancient saints, and see 
how closely they stood by the side of God, and bound 
their own personal honor to his throne. God was their 
God ; His truth was their truth ; His honor was their 
honor ; and any attack made upon Him, His character, 
His truth, or His honor, was received as an attack upon 
themselves. We fight for our opinions, for our sect, 
for our church, for our institutions ; they fought for 
Him and for His truth — for that which only gives sig- 
nificance and value to any institution of man. Oh ! 
how far, how very far, are we from any just apprecia- 
tion of the infinite wealth upon which we may legiti- 
mately lay our hand, as our own property ! We stand 
and hear the name of God blasphemed with a lighter 
shock and a smaller draft on personal feeling than we 
experience when we hear a pet dogma denounced, and 
this simply and alone because we identify ourselves 



132 Gold-Foil. 



with the dogma, as our possession, more than we do 
with the Deity. 

I can conceive of no reason, and I believe there is 
no reason, why God and Heaven, and the brotherhood 
of angels, seem so remote from those who believe 
themselves to be the sons and daughters of God, save 
in the fact that they have no recognized property or 
.interest in them. The moment that these beings and 
things come into relation with a soul in any important 
sense as possessions, that soul will identify itself with 
them. When a soul approaches God as its Father, 
Heaven as its home, and all pure spirits as a portion of 
a family in which it rightfully holds a place, its interest 
and sympathy and honor are linked to them by a tie 
which cannot be dissolved. They enter into vital rela- 
tions with its life. They enter into and become a part 
of its life. Its destiny is hung upon them. In short, 
it is identified with them in such a way that it will be 
wounded the most keenly and honored the most grate- 
fully through them. 

Again, the benevolence of this law, by which we 
identify ourselves with the things which we love as 
possessions, is manifested by .the influence they are 
thus brought to bear upon our character. A man 
whose most highly valued possession is a horse, will so 
identify himself with his possession that he will rise no 
higher in the scale of dignity than his horse. His 



The Love of what is ours. ]33 

horse and those who are identified with a similar pos- 
session will be the best society he has. He will enjoy 
no other. All his talk will be horse-talk. That which 
holds the most intimate relation to his life will deter 
mine that life's development and character. Any stu- 
dent of human nature understands this. The class of 
what are strictly horse-men is just as distinctly marked 
a class as can be found ; and its characteristics are de- 
termined by their identification with the animal to 
which they are devoted. The benevolence of the op- 
eration of this law may not be so apparent in this, but 
the operation itself is illustrated with peculiar force. 
As we pass on, however, to the consideration of the 
influence of higher possessions, we find the benevolence 
for which we seek. 

Let God be apprehended by the soul as its own 
Father, and all truth as its own wealth, and all the uni- 
verse as its own home — the domain of its Father — and 
all pure intelligences as its brethren ; let all these come 
into the soul as possessions — as beings and things in 
which abide its rights and privileges — so that it identi- 
fies itself with them for time and eternity, and in the 
place of horse-men we have divine-men. There is no 
dignity in all God's world like this. It raises man 
above all the distinctions of wealth, above all titles, and 
above all earthly dignities whatsoever. It places a 
man where he can look up with a pure adoration, and 



134 Gold-Foil. 



down with a true charity. It releases him from bond- 
age to creeds, and formularies of worship, and prescrip- 
tive lines of duty, and introduces him into the freedom 
of the sons of God. He is no more an alien — an out- 
sider — a slave spurred to the performance of his task — 
for God's life is in him as a possession, and that life is 
its own law. He holds the hands of angels in his own. 
He lives in truth, and truth lives in him. He walks 
the world a prince, knowing and feeling that he is an 
heir of God — a joint heir with Jesus Christ. I can 
conceive of no dignity like this ; tod when I see the great 
world of mankind identifying itself so exclusively with 
its meaner possessions, content with the dignity w T hich 
they confer, I see how exceedingly wide the gap is which 
divides the present time from the promised millennium. 
Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also 
— the heart with all its manifestations of love, devo- 
tion, charity, and honor. I know of no good reason 
why the earth should differ essentially from heaven — 
why men may not so identify themselves with their 
highest treasures here that they will partake of the 
home feeling of those who walk in white upon the 
banks of the river of life — why they may not feel with 
relation to God and that which is most precious to 
Him — His children, His realm, His heaven — as they do 
toward their earthly father, the paternal mansion, and 
the brothers and sisters that cluster there. 



The Love of what is ours. 135 

Give us an age of gallant, chivalrous Christianity — 
of men who maintain the honor of their Father's house. 
Give us an age that shall enlist the respect of all who 
respect earnestness and honor. Give us an age that 
shall appreciate that which it is fighting for, and will 
not crawl before the inferior and infernal powers that 
make war upon the throne. Give us an age in which 
Christians will fight for and stand by one another, and 
not fight against one another. Give us an age in 
which Christian manhood shall assert itself as the high- 
est earthly thing and the noblest earthly estate. Give 
us an age that, instead of whining and groaning under 
the truth, shall rejoice in the truth. Give us an age 
which, lifted into identity with its highest possessions, 
shall be made by those possessions patient, pure, heroic, 
and honorable. Give us the blessed thousand years I 




XII. 

THE POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 

'* The straightest stick is crooked in water." 

" Opportunity makes the thief." 

" The orange that is too hard sqaeezed yields a bitter juice. 1 

" Circumstances alter cases." 



IN" making up our judgments upon men and women 
who have fallen from their integrity, we fail to 
consider sufficiently the circumstances in which their 
fall occurred. While these may never justify the lapse 
which they occasioned, they furnish abundant basis for 
the compassionate and charitable judgment of all who, 
like them, are subject to temptation, and liable to cir- 
cumstances that weaken the soul in its power of re 
sistance. The straightest stick is crooked in water, 
and the most upright character bends, even if it do not 
break, when subjected to a great temptation, in cir- 
cumstances that favor the wrong and tend to paralyze 
the power to withstand it. Before God, he or she who 



The Power of Circumstances. 137 

falls is guilty ; but their fellows should be the las'i to 
point the finger of contempt, or indulge in self-right- 
eous gratulations that they are not fallen also. It may 
reasonably be doubted whether, if there were to be a 
universal exchange of individualities in the world, the 
amount of sin would be sensibly diminished. In other 
words, if you, or I, had been subjected to the same 
temptations, under the same circumstances, that re- 
sulted in the sending of our old acquaintance to the 
state-prison for forgery, the probabilities are that we 
should to-day be dressing stone for the public good. 
If your daughter or mine had been exposed to the 
wiles of a villain, under the circumstances which sur- 
rounded our neighbor's daughter when she fell, and 
that neighbor's daughter had been in the place of ours, 
the probabilities are that our daughter would be lost 
to us and a true life, and that our neighbor's daughter 
would be safe. Our business, then, is to thank God 
for the circumstances which have favored us, to pity 
those. who have not been thus favored, and to be very 
careful of our censure. 

To a greater extent than the most of us imagine, 
the wrongs, sins and errors of the age were born of, 
and have been perpetuated by, circumstances. We 
are accustomed to inveigh against slavery. We de- 
nounce it as a high crime in those who sustain it, and a 
curse to all the parties concerned in it. We wonder 



138 Gold-Foil. 



why anybody can regard it in any different light. On 
the other hand, the upholders of slavery regard it as a 
divine institution, beneficial to the blacks and to them- 
selves, and hold its opponents to be fanatics, hypocrites, 
disorganizes, and inexpressibly contemptible men. To 
make both parties feel more kindly toward each other, 
it ought to be only necessary for them to remember 
that, had they exchanged dwelling-places and circum- 
stances at their birth, they would have exchanged 
sentiments and opinions. Our craziest abolitionists 
would, from their natural temperament, have been in 
Charleston the craziest fire-eaters, and the most zealous 
advocate of slavery would at the [North have been the 
principal speaker at the Syracuse conventions. If 
Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison had been born in 
New Orleans, to an inheritance of three hundred slaves 
a|)iece, and Robert Toombs and Alexander Stevens 
had grown up under the shadow of Bunker Hill, they 
would have been diametrically opposed to each other 
as they are to-day. It is the most senseless thing in 
the world for these parties to feel unkindly towards 
each other. Each may struggle strenuously for the 
maintenance of his own ideas of the right, but both 
should always remember that it is from no merit or 
demerit of theirs that they differ. Circumstances, in 
ninety-nine cases in a hundred, make both the oppo- 
nents and the defenders of slavery. 



The Power of Circumstances. 139 

Thus it is in the matter of religion. The Catholic 
regards the Protestant as no Christian, and the Protes- 
tant regards the Catholic as the upholder of the gross- 
est errors. Each class regards the other with con- 
tempt, and wonders how it can embrace a system 
which it deems utterly illegitimate and fatally danger- 
ous. What makes them differ ? Circumstances, not 
choice. England and Ireland sit side by side, subjects 
of the same Queen. The English, born of Protestant 
parents, are Protestants. The Irish, born of Catholic 
parents, are Catholics. They stand in the relation of 
religious enemies, and talk about each other as bitterly 
as if they had really had something to do in making 
themselves what they respectively are, when, in ninety- 
nine cases in a hundred, they have had nothing to do 
with it whatever. The circumstances in which they 
were born and bred have made them what they are. 
The Catholics emigrate to this Protestant country. 
We regard them as misled in the main, and intention- 
ally misleading in the exceptions. We wonder how 
they can pin their faith to their church in the way they 
do. Yet circumstances, over which they had no con- 
trol, led them naturally into the Catholic church — cir- 
cumstances gave them Catholic parentage, and sur- 
rounded them with Catholic influences. ISTo Protes- 
tant can reasonably doubt that had he been born and 
reared under the same circumstances, he would now 



140 Gold-Foil. 



be a Catholic; and there are probably not ten in a 
thousand Catholics who would not be Protestants had 
they been born and bred under Protestant influences. 
Now, while this fact should make no difference in the 
estimation in which each holds the other's system of 
religion, it should dispossess them at once and forever 
of all bitterness of feeling toward each other, and of 
the self-righteous assumption of superiority. 

It would be relevant to allude to political parties in 
this connection, but it is not necessary. The same fact 
holds good, in a general way, with relation to all the 
great subjects that divide men into opposing masses. 
It may be well, however, to say that in the matter of 
social position, so far, at least, as it is based in birth, 
there is no cause of glorying on the part of any man. 
Two children play together, and grow up together. 
One is the offspring of a man of wealth and high social 
standing. The other is the son or daughter of a la- 
borer, poor, and, perhaps, ignorant. One of these chil- 
dren comes in time to look down upon his humble 
neighbor, and the other is brought to feel, sooner or 
later, that he is proscribed. What makes these chil- 
dren to differ ? Nothing but circumstances, over 
which neither had a particle of control, yet one of them 
gets proud in his adventitious position — proud of his 
circumstances. Circumstances, ordered by Providence, 
doubtless, grade society through all the steps that 



The Power of Circumstances. 141 

reach- from the bottom to the top of it. This fact may 
be recognized — all the classes of society may be recog- 
nized — and yet between each class there cannot legiti- 
mately be a particle of bitterness, of envy, of jealousy 
or of pride. 

Again, to leave this class of generalizations, let ns 
instance a lad in the city born of drunken parents, and 
trained to familiarity with the observation and the 
practice of vice from the earliest conscious moment of 
his life. He is a beggar at six, a thief at ten, a drunk- 
ard at twelve, a libertine at sixteen, and a murderer at 
twenty. Another lad is born in a quiet country home, 
with a Christian father and mother. His whole training 
is in the direction of virtue. As soon as he can speak, 
he is taught to pray. He is carefully guarded from all 
vicious influences, educated in the atmosphere of a pure 
and self-sacrificing love, becomes the possessor of a lofty 
Christian purpose, and, at thirty, finds himself by the 
side of the poor convict boy of the city, endeavoring 
to prepare him for the change of worlds which will 
come with his execution. What makes the lives of 
these two men differ so widely ? What, but circum- 
stances ? I do not say that this city boy is, in his his- 
tory, the representative of all the vicious men and 
women in the world, but he is, in many respects, the 
representative of the larger part of them, as the coun- 
try boy is the representative of the larger part of the 



142 Gold-Foil. 



virtuous. How ought this fact to open wide the arms 
of our pity and our charity towards those whose steps 
are bent toward ruin ! How inconsiderate is that self- 
righteous contempt and abhorrence with which a vir- 
tuous world regards those who only needed favoring 
circumstances to make them pure and worthy as 
itself. 

The truth is, that the great brotherhood and sister- 
hood of sin groan under the uncharitable judgments of 
those w r ho, but for circumstances interposed by other 
power than their own, would have been among their 
number. These judgments may not be unjust, but they 
are uncalled for. They may be just, coming from Him 
who sees the heart, but they are illegitimate, proceed- 
ing from those whom kinder circumstances have aided 
to preserve. I say they groan under these judgments. 
They feel bitterly in regard to them, and they will ac- 
cept no beneficent ministry at the hands of the good 
until they receive the sympathy to which they believe 
themselves entitled. Any man who approaches this 
class in an attempt do them good, with censure on his 
ips, and the assumption of a self-won and self-preserved 
righteousness in his bearing, will find, to the cost of hi3 
mission, that every heart is closed against him. There 
is a basis of brotherhood and tender sympathy in this 
connection of circumstances with the development of 
character and life, and on this basis every man must 



The Power of Circumstances. 143 

stand who would raise the fallen, strengthen the weak, 
and reclaim the erring. 

Leaving classes, we come to individuals. The 
orange that is too hard squeezed yields a bitter juice 
Here and there, in the path of our observation, we see 
men and women who, having lived good and reputable 
lives, yield to some sudden and overwhelming tempta- 
tion, and fall with a crash that startles our hearts with 
terror. Some man whom, through a life of strict in- 
tegrity, we have regarded as a model of honor and 
honesty, suddenly stands before the world condemned 
as a defaulter, a swindler, a forger. Did it ever occur 
to you to stop for a moment, and think what a band of 
circumstances must have conspired against, and what 
temptations must have assailed him, even to lead him 
one step towards the resistance of conscience, the sacri- 
fice of his peace of mind, the forfeiture of his good 
name, and the danger of the surrender of his personal 
freedom ? Did you ever pause in your judgment, and 
attempt to measure the solitary, secret, hand-to-hand 
conflict with the devil by which he was at last dis- 
armed, baffled, and ruined ? Did you ever attempt to 
realize the fact, that if you had been in his place you 
might have fallen like him ? Do you sit coldly above 
the fallen man, and, with the unthinking world, con- 
demn him ? Ah ! pity him ; pity him. Fray that you 
enter not into temptation, and, while you hold his sin 



144 Gold-Foil. 



in horror, remember that kinder circumstances and 
smaller temptations have probably saved you from his 
fate. 

Some gentle girl, full of all sweet hopes and bright 
with innocent beauty, gives her heart to one who is 
unworthy of her. She yields him her faith to be be- 
trayed, her love to be abused, her trust to be deceived. 
Enslaved by circumstances, shorn of will by the blind 
devotion of her passion, ensnared by the toils of one 
whom she believes incapable of wilful wrong, she wakes 
from her mad dream a ruined woman. What have you 
to say to her, or to say about her ? God forgive you, if 
you, man or woman, can stand over the prostrate crea- 
ture from whom hope has departed, and breathe into her 
ears words of condemnation and scorn ! Why are 
you, woman, who read these words, better than she ? 
Madame, Maiden, the straightest stick is crooked in 
water. Condemn her sin if you will, hold it in abhor- 
rence as you must ; but when, with beseeching look, 
she comes into your presence, her self-righteous ac- 
cusers around her, remember how the Christ that is in 
you impels you to delay judgment, and, while revolving 
the pitiful circumstances of her fall, to stoop humbly 
and write that judgment in the sand. 

The track, upon which the train of human reforma- 
tion runs, is laid in sympathy, and this sympathy car 
never be established so long as there exists in the heart 



The Power of Circumstances. 145 

of virtue the same feeling of hatred towards the sinner 
that is felt towards the sin. The world will accept and 
can have no Saviour who has not been tempted and 
been surrounded with circumstances that exhibited to 
him the measure of human weakness. A being must 
be tempted " in all points like as we are " before we 
can give him our hand to be led up higher. The soul 
that does not appreciate the power of temptation has 
no mission to the tempted. It is a law of the heart 
that it will not accept the ministry of natures that have 
no sympathy with it. Go the world over, and select 
those preachers who have the greatest power over men 
— power to move them in high directions, and power 
to attract them with strong and tender affections — and 
they will, without exception, be found to be those who 
betray hearts and experiences that show that they are 
sympathetic with the tempted. The exceedingly proper 
young men who graduate from the theological institu- 
tions, in white cravats and white complexions, are men 
who have little power in the world, as a general thing, 
The world knows at once that such men know nothing 
of its heart ; but when it finds an earnest, Christian 
worker, who has passed through the fire ? and exhibits 
the possession of what we are wont to call " human 
nature," it turns to him with the feeling that he has a 
right to teach it. 

There are a great many brotherhoods in the world, 



146 Gold-Foil. 



but none so large as the brotherhood of temptation and 
untoward circumstance. A race of beings find them* 
selves in the world without any act of their own, in 
circumstances not of their own choosing — some better, 
some worse — and all the subjects of temptation. The 
riddle of life is unsolved. The meaning of their rela- 
tions to that which tends to degrade them is not com- 
prehended. Now the situation of this race is, to me, one 
of touching and profound interest. With a God over 
its head and a law in its heart that hold it to accounta- 
bility, and with appetites and passions within, and cir- 
cumstances and temptations without, urging, coaxing, 
driving it to transgression — what a spectacle is this for 
angels and for God ! Yet here we all are, struggling, 
toiling, falling, rising, hoping, despairing. Now, if this 
great fact, of common subjection to evil influence do 
not give us a basis for a common sympathy, I do not 
know what other fact in God's world does. Doubtless 
the brotherhood of true Christianity is a purer tie than 
this, but it is less a human tie and more a divine. 
Doubtless the love proceeding out of a pure Christian 
spirit is a stronger motive of labor for the elevation of 
men than this sympathy, but uncoupled with it, it can 
accomplish but little. This brotherhood is first to be 
recognized ; this sympathy is first to be felt, before a 
Christian purpose with relation to the race can be in- 
dulged with any practical effect for good. 



The Power of Circumstances. 147 

I stand by my kind ; and I thank God for the 
temptations that have brought me into sympathy with 
them, as I do for the love that urges me to efforts for 
their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and 
temptation in the name of humanity, and give them as- 
surance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, 
of his disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sym- 
pathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm foot- 
ing of the rock of safety. I assure them that there are 
hearts that consider while they condemn, and pity 
where they may not praise — that there are those even 
among Christian men and women, who feel attracted 
toward them as they cannot feel attracted toward the 
self-righteous and uncharitable men and women who 
have named the name Ineffable, and claim a place upon 
the rolls of the redeemed. I can never fail to remem- 
ber that whatever I possess of good, of light, of liberty, 
of love, has come to me mainly on the wings of circum- 
stances, and that a greater portion of the evil, the ig- 
norance, the bondage and the hate that I see all around 
me was borne to those who hold and exhibit them, 
by the same purveyors. I come not between God's 
law and man's accountability, but I take the great fact 
as I find it, that life, in the main, follows the line of its 
original lot, as a basis of sympathy on which I stand 
with one hand in the hand of all humanity, and the 
other pointing hopefully toward the stars. 



Kk^S-cy i±<s>?scy f\t^stcf f\*7^tc¥ fSj^fhcf f^^j^cf i><>4£cy 

r>^» 4 « £-y >^<» ife ^y^v»i* /^y^a^fe w^««« yy ' v -^<» • e 1q/^«.» )q 



XIII. 

ANYILS AND HAMMERS. 

w When you are an anvil, bear ; -when you are a hammer, strike*" 
" There is never wanting a dog to "bark at you." 
" An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him." 
" He laughs best who laughs last." 

EVERY man in the world who gives blows must 
take blows. Every man who occupies the posi- 
tion of a positive force, bearing upon the thought and 
life of the world, is a hammer that, more or less, must 
submit itself to the fulfilment of the office of an anvil. 
Those whom he assails, or the supporters of that which 
he assails, will turn up his face, and undertake to 
straighten their crooked nails on it, or re-fasten the 
rivets of their broken cisterns on it, or pound the 
wrinkles out of their battered opinions on it, or punish 
it with spiteful indentations. The perfection of art 
with such a man is to strike heartily when he assumes 
the office of a hammer, and bear bravely when he is 



Anvils and Hammers. 149 



compelled to be an anvil. Until a man becomes as 
good an anvil as he is a hammer, he fails to be thor- 
oughly fitted for his work. What an indurate old an- 
vil Martin Luther was ! He smote errors and abuses 
and sins with blows that sent their resonant echoes 
through all the centuries. He was a moral sledge- 
hammer, assailing a system that shook through all its 
rotten timbers ; but that system and its defenders re- 
turned his assaults, and tested his resistance and en- 
durance. The diet of Worms made an anvil of him ; 
and the kind of steel he had in him was manifested in 
his reply to the friends who undertook to dissuade him 
from going to Worms to be hammered : " Were there 
as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would 
on ! " That was the way of Luther, the anvil. 

The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres 
of every true reformer's character. They are, in fact, 
the two aspects of every leader, let him be never so 
high, or never so humble. Every man who strikes 
blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the 
right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer. 
If he is not, he may properly conclude that he has no 
very important mission in the improvement and pro- 
gress of his race. If private and instituted sin, error, 
prejudice and wrong would be kind enough to stand 
quietly, and let us batter in their sides, or knock them 
down, reform would become a fine art, with great at- 



150 Gold-Foil. 



tractions for men of weak constitutions and gentle 
pedigree; but they always object to this mode of 
treatment ; and any man who attacks them must cal- 
culate on his power of resistance, or his power to bear 
without flinching the blows he will receive in return. 
A pugilist, who is dn inferior hammer, not unfrequently 
wins a fight, in consequence of being a superior anvil. 
If victory were always with the hammer the French 
would always be victorious; but the anvil won at 
Waterloo. 

But the blows which a reformer receives in direct 
response to his own are not always the hardest things 
he has to bear. Many become so hardened to these 
that they rather enjoy them. Direct and powerful op- 
position is a kind of compliment to the assailing power, 
and demonstrates fear, or the consciousness of damage, 
on the part of the assailed. Every system and institu- 
tion of wrong, error and sin has its defenders ; but, be- 
yond these, it has adherents and friends in multitudes, 
who, being unable to enter the lists' as champions, re- 
sort to smaller and meaner arts of enmity. There is 
never wanting any number of dogs to bark at an honest 
man. Now this playing the part of an anvil, and being 
the object of the vocal demonstrations of a popular 
quadruped, are two very different things. Many a 
man can withstand the fiercest blows of an individual, 
who will shrink from the barking of the people. Many 



Anvils and Hammers. 151 

a man can give blows valiantly and receive them brave- 
ly, who is made very nervous and miserable by clamor 
about his heels, and spiteful feints at the terminal por- 
tions of his pantaloons. In fact, there is nothing which 
a true man cannot bear, provided he is conscious of 
possessing the sympathy of the people. 

When a reformer utterly loses, or fails to gain, the 
sympathy of the people, strong indeed must be his 
conviction, profound indeed must be his charity, and 
vital must his faith and purpose be, if he can still strike 
lustily in their behalf. Oh ! how few enter upon a 
career of reform, in whatever department of life, and 
come out of it uninjured ! How few are abl^ to battle 
through a lifetime with the errors and sins of society, 
and escape unembittered toward those whom they 
have endeavored to benefit ! How few can close a 
life of self-sacrifice, — misconstrued, misrepresented and 
abused, — with the immortal words, welling up from a 
heart of love still full and overflowing, " Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they do ! " 

I suppose that indifference to direct opposition and 
popular clamor, even if in some sense desirable, is im- 
possible in a nature worthy of any good work. Every 
man who becomes the subject of these should, how* 
ever, guard himself against the consequences to which 
I have alluded. Every man should guard himself 
against a waning faith in humanity. Moral forces 



152 Gold-Foil. 



move slowly, partly from their nature and the compli- 
cation of their processes, and partly from the lack of 
social sympathy among the masses of men. The most 
that a reformer can hope to do in his short life is to 
introduce a leaven into society which shall at length 
work the elevation he desires to effect. He can rarely 
move masses to his w T ill by the immediate exercise of 
power, because there are, in sympathy, no such things 
as masses of men. There are loosely bound aggrega- 
tions of individualities, but no masses through which 
runs so thorough a sympathy that action upon one will 
be action upon all. It must be remembered that a man 
may apparently have all society against him, and yet 
be engaged in a work which will certainly and thor- 
oughly revolutionize its opinions and habits. An air- 
line railroad, running straight through home-lot and 
garden and dwelling, through hill and valley and 
meadow, will throw everybody upon its course into 
wild confusion during the progress of its construction ; 
and w r ere w T e to sympathize with the clamor of those 
with w T hose private interests it temporarily interferes, 
we should unite with them in calling it a curse. But 
when, after long preparation, and great individual 
labor and sacrifice, it is completed, and' the cars com- 
mence their regular trips, the abutters upon the road 
adapt themselves to it, reap gladly and gratefully its 
advantages in the appreciation of their estates, and 



Anvils and Hammers. 153 

learn to regard it as a blessing which they cannot 
spare. 

There are many good reasons why a reformer 
should be slow to lose his faith in humanity. The first 
and most obvious is, that there is always involved in 
this loss the loss of faith in God and in himself. I have 
yet to see the first reformer who has lost his faith in 
men — who has become sour and bitter toward his fel- 
lows — who has not also ceased to be a religious man. 
The religious anniversaries in the great cities nearly 
always are accompanied by gatherings of men who, 
having exhausted their faith in their fellows, and be- 
come bankrupt in charity, meet to pour into one an- 
other's ears, and into the ears of a curious multitude, 
the horrid discords of their blatant infidelity. The re- 
former feels, too, that he comes into any general judg- 
ment of his kind. If he do not feel this fully, he at 
least loses faith in his power over men, and, disap- 
pointed, sinks back into fretfulness over the failure of 
his mission, and the miscarriage of his life. 

Another reason why a reformer should be slow to 
lose faith in men, is because they cannot at once un- 
derstand him. They have lost faith in leaders, and for 
good cause. Leaders have been accustomed to use 
them for the accomplishment of selfish purposes. Thus, 
when a new leader arises, it takes them a long time to 
become fully assured of his motives. As there are al« 



154 Gold-Foil. 



ways men enough whose selfishness leads them to mis- 
construe these motives, it may sometimes require many 
years for a man to vindicate himself, and secure confi- 
dence. There is no justice in blaming the people for 
this cautiousness : they have been deceived too often, 
and would be fools were they not to exercise it. A re- 
former has no right to expect immediate reception into 
the confidence of the people. They must be satisfied 
of the motives of him who undertakes to lead them, 
measure his ability, sound the depths of his charity, and 
intellectually comprehend his plans before they ought 
to consent to be guided by him. It is no more than 
just to say, that every reformer who has lost his faith in 
men, and become embittered by the loss, proves that 
the judgment of the people upon his character is just. 
He undertook a task for which he was not fit, and the 
people found him out. 

A stronger reason still for the preservation of faith 
in men, is, that the more intractable and unreasonable 
they may be, the greater their need of reformation, and 
the larger draft do they make upon faith. Faith in hu- 
manity, under divine guidance and blessing, is the hope 
of the world. Christianity comes to us with no com- 
pulsory processes. It has faith in itself, doubtless ; but 
without faith in men, it would never have come, or 
never would have made its appeal to voluntary choice. 
All powers that have no faith in men act by compulsion, 



Anvils and Hammers. 155 

or by circumvention. There can be no action upon 
will — no motives of action presented to voluntary 
choice — that do not proceed upon the basis of faith in 
humanity. The moment we lose this faith, our efforts 
are paralyzed, and we turn railers and accusers. A man 
who desires to benefit his fellows cannot proceed a sin- 
gle step without faith in those whom he would benefit. 
Xo matter how bad men may be, there must be, 
on the part of him who would reform them, the faith 
that there is that in them which will respond to the 
truth when it can be brought into contact with their 
judgment and conscience, or he can do absolutely 
nothing. 

The people owe a duty to all who come to them 
with the professed wish to do them good. A man is 
not necessarily bad because a dog barks at him, and an 
honest man is never the worse because a dog barks at 
him. If you will look over your town, your state, your 
country, you will readily select the names of those 
against whom there is more or less of popular clamor. 
You will recall here and there names that are names of 
reproach. You shrink from association with those who 
bear them. If you enter their presence, you enter sus- 
piciously, as if you feared a taint, or guiltily, as if you 
thought them conscious of the contempt in which you 
hold them. You think, because there is so much out- 
cry against them, there must be something bad in them. 



156 Gold-Foil. 



Now, no considerate, generous man will join in this out- 
cry, or allow it to prejudice him against its object. It 
is, I believe, the general rule, that these men are men 
of power — of genuine progressive ideas — men who have 
an errand of good to their race. 

Look back over the past, and see how many of those 
whom the w T orld once abused are the world's idols. 
Who are the preachers whom you most delight to 
hear ? Have they not, at some time in their history, 
been the objects of the world's outcry, and of yours, 
too ? Look at the ballots which you carry to the polls 
with confidence, and perhaps with unlimited enthu- 
siasm. Do they not bear the names of men whom you 
once verily believed to be the incarnations of selfish- 
ness and demagogism? Think of the statesmen, hunted 
to their graves by the hounds of popular clamor, who 
are now enthroned among the nation's immortals. Re- 
member all the men against whom you have joined in 
denunciation, and whom you have learned to respect, 
if not to love, by getting near to them, and obtaining 
a look into their honest hearts and a vision of their de- 
voted lives. Look over the whole track of history, and 
see how every one w r ho ever did great good in the 
world has been the object of the world's maledictions, 
and then be careful how you join in an unreasoning out- 
cry against any man. 

While the world should be more careful and consid- 



Anvils and Hammers. 157 

erate in its treatment of those who come to it with a 
mission of good, the reformer himself should be very 
patient with the world. He must not only retain his 
faith in it, but he must not be in too great a hurry to 
be understood and accepted. He must draw close to 
the world, where it can look into his heart, and the 
world should draw close to him, until it is rationally 
satisfied that he has nothing for it. The efforts of op- 
posing forces, backed by the indorsement of the un- 
reasoning multitude, should throw no worker for the 
world off his poise, nor should they deprive him of the 
honest judgments of those who think. Xo true man 
will ever be in haste to vindicate himself before the 
world by direct efforts for that end. He has faith in 
men, and that gives him faith in the ultimate judgments 
of men. He lives, and speaks, and acts, and he is con- 
tent to let his life, his words, and his actions speak for 
him. By them he knows that, sooner or later, the 
world will judge him, and he is content. Show me a 
man who gets excited and uneasy under popular clamor, 
and betrays his unhappiness and anxiety by frequent 
private or public explanations and justifications, and 
you will show me one who is not to be trusted. He 
has not the spirit nor the stamina for his work. But 
he who goes straight forward, confident in his own mo- 
tives, true to his own convictions, and calmly trustful 
of the ultimate issue of his efforts and his life, is of the 



158 Gold-Foil. 



true metal, and one maybe sure that there is something 
good in him. 

He laughs best who laughs last. The wheels of 
progress do not stop. The world advances toward and 
into a better life, and will advance until, leaving the 
hard, clumsy and jarring pavements of the marts of 
selfishness behind, it will strike off joyously into the 
broad avenue of the millennium. No man can be a 
true worker for human good who does not believe that 
the cobble-stone pavement has an end, and that there 
is an avenue ahead where it will be his turn to enjoy 
himself. He believes that the time will come when 
what he is doing, and has done, will be accepted at its 
true value. He may be laughed at now ; he may be 
scoffed at and scorned ; his motives may be maligned ; 
he may be hammered by opposition and barked at by 
popular clamor ; but he knows that sometime in the fu- 
ture it will be his turn to laugh, and he is confident that 
he will laugh last and laugh best. He knows that God 
will prove to be a good paymaster, and he believes that 
the world will, in the long run, be just. 

If any man propound ideas in advance of the world, 
the world, in its progress, will come up to them, as cer- 
tainly as the world continues to exist, and then, if not 
before, it will remember. Those who cherish truth 
and stand by the right, must be at warfare with those 
who hold to falsehood and to sin. There is no con- 



Anvils and Hammers. 159 

scrip tion in this war. It is a voluntary service on both 
sides, and neither is in want of cowards. There is a 
contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of 
the blows and clamors of opposing forces. There is no 
honorable fighting for any man w^ho is not ready to for- 
get that he has a head to be battered and a name to be 
bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as 
ready to be struck, as to strike, for her. The eye that 
can see the triumph of that which is good in the world 
from afar, the heart that can be certain of victory, 
though now in the sulphurous thickness of the fight, 
can afford present contumely and even present defeat. 
The bearer of such a heart and eye knows that, sooner 
or later, the time w T ill come when he and the band to 
which he belongs shall celebrate a final victory over all 
that oppose them — that they shall come home from the 
contest "with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
heads." He knows that the last shout will be his, and 
that the severer the conflict the heartier will that shout 
be. Ah ! what peans of triumph, w r hat sweeps of ma- 
jestic music, what waving of banners, what joyous tu- 
mult of white-robed hosts, shall greet him who goes 
homo, worn and weary, to take a crown worthily won 
in the contest with error and with wrong. May that 
crown be yours and mine ! 



XIV. 

EVERY MAN HAS HIS PLACE. 

" You stout and I stout, 
Who shall carry the dirt out ? " 
" Every man cannot be vicar of Bowden." 
" He that cannot paint must grind the colors." 

WHO shall be vicar of Bowden and who shall 
carry the dirt out-^who shall paint and who 
shall grind the colors — are questions which, in various 
forms, have agitated the world since human society- 
existed. Dissatisfaction with position and condition is 
well nigh universal. Every man walks with his eyes 
and wishes upwards — some moved by aspiration for a 
nobler good, others by ambition for a higher place ; 
some by emulation of a worthy example, others by dis- 
content with the allotments of Providence. The in- 
fant does not forget to climb when he learns to walk, 
nor is the man less a climber than the boy. Every 
thing is towering, or climbing, or reaching, or looking 



Every Man has his Place. 161 

upward. The elm stretches its feathery arms and 
waves its hands toward the clouds that hang over it , 
the vine pulls itself up the elm by its delicate fingers ; 
and the violet sits at the foot of the vine and looks up, 
and breathes its fragrant wishes heavenward. Even 
the sleeping lakelet in the meadow dreams of stars, 
and will not be satisfied without a private firmament 
of water-lilies. It is as if God had whispered into the 
ear of all existence, the moment it was emerging from 
nihility, the words — " look up ! " and, hardly knowing 
why, it had been looking up ever since. Well, this is 
right ; for, far above every thing shines the great 
"White Throne — sits the Father Soul — abide the treas- 
uries of all good — burns the uncreated fire at which 
the torches of life were lighted. It is a natural, in- 
stinctive thing to look upward. 

Discontent may be a very good thing, or a very 
bad thing. There is a discontent which is divine, — 
which has its birth in the highest and purest inspira- 
tions that visit and stir the soul. All that discontent 
which grows from dissatisfaction with present attain- 
ment, or springs from a desire for higher usefulness, or 
has its birth in motives that impel to the worthy 
achievement of an honorable name and an honorable 
place, is a thing to be visited by blessings and benisons. 
Discontent which comes from below — w T hich comes 
from a soul disgusted with its lot — a soul faithless in 



162 Gold-Foil. 



God, and out of harmony with the arrangements and 
the operations of Providence, is an evil thing — only 
evil — and that continually. One holds the principle 
of love ; the other of malice. One is attracted from 
above ; the other is instigated from below. One tends 
to the development of a symmetrical, strong, and har- 
monious character ; the other to disorganization and 
depreciation. One is from heaven, the other is from 
hell. 

I look out of my window, and see a carriage rolling 
by, with its freight of richly-dressed ladies. On the 
coach-box sits a man -who drives the horses when they 
go, and opens the door of the carriage and lets down 
the steps when they stop. Further up the street there 
is a building going up. The architect stands by with 
his hand in his breast, giving directions. The hod- 
carrier, smeared with mortar, passes him, climbs the 
giddy ladder, and drops the bricks upon the scaffold- 
ing, and these, one after another, are driven to their 
places by the ringing trowel of the brick-layer. I rise 
from my seat, and walk through the rooms adjoining 
my own. Here sits an editor, hastily putting together 
the thoughts that will form to-morrow's leader. At 
another table sits another editor, culling from a pile of 
exchanges bits of intelligence that come in on a thou- 
sand paper wings from other communities. At their 
cases stand the compositors, setting up, type by type, 



Every Man has his Place. 163 

the matter which the editors prepare for them. The 
pressman and the engineer have their respective parts 
to perform. I find the great aggregate of life to be a 
network of duties — an organized system of duties. In 
order to secure the comfort of the whole, there is a 
certain amount of work to be done, infinitely various 
in kind. There must be an architect to plan, there 
must be a hod-carrier to bear mortar, and a brick-layer 
to lay the bricks, or we shall have no buildings. There 
must be an editor, and a compositor, and a pressman, 
or there will be no newspaper. Who shall do the 
thinking, and who shall perform the manual labor ? 
Who shall paint, and who shall grind the colors ? 
Every man cannot be vicar of Bowden. 

It does not suffice to tell discontented people that 
every man has his place, and will find his highest ac- 
count in seeking to fill it, and to fill it well. What 
particularly troubles them is, that they were made for 
so low a place. They really call God's wisdom and 
benevolence in question for assigning to them subordi- 
nate offices in operating the machinery of society. A 
man finds himself distinguished by clumsy hands and 
broad shoulders, with a hod on his back, and complains 
that he was not made for a brick-layer ; and the brick- 
layer wishes he had the ease and the honor of the 
architect, and wonders why his power of achievement 
is so closely circumscribed. The coachman rubs down 



164 Gold-Foil 



his horses, and marvels that he was not born to their 
ownership, and that the owner was not born to drive 
for him. So people quarrel with their position, the 
world over. Every thing in the world is unequal to 
these people. They do not see the impartial justice 
of conferring upon one man great mental faculties, 
pleasant address, and commanding presence, while 
another is condemned to be a dwarf, both in mind and 
body, and to serve his more highly-favored neighbor 
that he may win bread and raiment. 

Well, there is all this work to do : who shall do it ? 
A link broken in the chain will spoil the chain. There 
are all these places to fill : who shall fill them ? I fill 
a subordinate office in the world : why should not you ? 
Is there any good reason why you should be vicar of 
Bowden, and the vicar of Bowden should tend a toll- 
bridge, or conduct a railroad train ? Since these 
things are to be done by somebody, you and I may as 
well take the part that comes to us, and perform it. 
It is not best to stop the wheels of society on our pri- 
vate account. If you and I have had any injustice 
done to us in the assignment of our duties, it will not 
mend any thing to fasten our ill-fortune upon some- 
body else ; and you and I are not the men to skulk, I 
think. Genuine, manly pluck and good nature w T ill 
settle much of this difficulty. If our advance involve 
nothing more than a change of places with others, it is 



Every Man has his Place. 165 



not exactly the manly thing to whine about our 
lot. 

But there is a better and a broader basis for the 
settlement of this matter than this ; and did we pos- 
sess even a modicum of the faith hi God that w^e ought 
to possess, we should feel certain there would be such 
a basis, though we might fail to find it. The instinc- 
tive, persistent search of the soul is for happiness. We 
seek for office, or place, or wealth ; we pine over the 
fact that our mental endowments and acquisitions are 
comparatively indifferent or positively mean ; and w^hy ? 
Because, while we lie dreaming upon our pillow of 
stone, the places and positions of fife shape themselves 
into a ladder on which angels ascend and descend, the 
last round leaning on a heavenly landing ; because that 
which is above us, in allotment, gift, and acquisition, 
forms so many steps of the gradatory that leads from 
the cells where we do penance, to the temple where we 
expect peace and heavenly communion. In other 
words, we are discontented because w^e believe there 
is more happiness on the upper steps of society than 
on ours ; and here is where the great mistake is made. 

If there be any thing which human history teaches 
more thoroughly than any other thing — if there be any 
fact revealed to observation more clearly than any 
other fact — it is, that happiness does not depend upon 
Dondition and position — that it has its birth in posses- 



166 Gold-Foil. 



sions and relations superior to, and in most respects 
unaffected by, those facts of individual and social life 
which divide men into classes. Here is where the 
Good Father equalizes human lot. High position, con- 
sidered by itself, is not a positive good — is not, in and 
of itself, a source of happiness to the souls planted upon 
it. There is no good reason to be found in the whole 
universe of God why the coachman should not be as 
happy as the dainty ladies whom he serves. There is 
no reason why the hod-carrier may not be as happy as 
the bricklayer, and the bricklayer as happy as the 
architect. Wants keep pace with wealth always. 
Responsibility w r alks hand in hand with capacity and 
power. Of him to whom much is given much will be 
required. Posts of honor are evermore posts of danger 
and of care. Each office of society has its burden, pro- 
portioned to its importance ; so that men shall find no 
apology for murmuring at the better lot of their neigh- 
bors, while all are made dependent for happiness upon 
common sources — open alike to him who wears fine 
linen and fares sumptuously every day, and the beggar 
who waits at his gate. 

I am inclined to think that if our minds were capa- 
ble of apprehending the essential facts of the life we 
see, we should be convinced that happiness is one of 
the most evenly distributed of all human possessions. 
The laborer loves his wife and children as well as the 



Every Man has his Place. 167 

lord, and takes into his soul all the tender and precious 
influences that flow to him through their love as well 
as he. Food tastes as sweetly to the ploughman as the 
placeman. If the latter have the daintier dish, the 
former has the keener appetite. Into all ears the brook 
pours the same stream of music, and the birds never 
vary their programme with reference to their audiences. 
The spring scatters violets broadcast, and grass grows 
by the roadside as well as in the park. The breeze that 
tosses the curls of your little ones and mine is not softer 
in its caresses of those who bound over velvet to greet it. 
The sun shines, the rain falls, the trees dress themselves 
in green, the thunder rolls, and the stars flash, for all 
alike. Health knows nothing of human distinctions, 
and abides with him who treats it best. Sleep, the gen- 
tle angel, does not come at the call of power, and never 
proffers its ministry for gold. The senses take no bribes 
of luxury ; but deal as honestly and generously by the 
poor as by the rich ; and the President of the United 
States would whistle himself blind before he could call 
our dog from us. 

If we examine this matter critically, we shall find 
that the sweetest satisfactions that come to us are those 
which spring from sources common to the race. If you 
and I are worthy men, that which is most precious to 
us, as the material of our daily happiness, is precisely 
that which is not dependent upon the positions we re- 



168 Gold-Foil. 



spectively occupy in the world. Now, if we look above 
this range of common Providence into that realm of 
fact, in which abides our common relationship to a 
common Father, the distinctions of society and the va- 
riety and contrariety of human lot fade away and be- 
come contemptible. If God smile on me and fill my 
heart with peace; if He forgive my sin, and give me 
promise and assurance of a higher life beyond the 
grave ; if He call me His child, and draw out from my 
cold and selfish heart a filial love for Him ; if He in- 
spire me with a brotherly charity that embraces in its 
arms all who bear His image ; if He give me a hope 
more precious to me than all gold, and transform the 
narrow path in which I walk into the vestibule of Heav- 
en, it will very naturally be a matter of indifference 
to me whether I paint, or grind the colors — whether I 
carry dirt, or officiate as the vicar of Bowden. If we 
were all made in His image ; if we are all held amena- 
ble tu the same law; if we all have offer of the same 
salvation ; if we are all to be judged according to our 
deeds ; if we have the promise of the same heaven on 
the same terms, it shows, at least, Wx±at God thinks of 
human distinctions. 

The ministry of nature, and love, and sympathy, 
are common to all men. On the broad platform of 
morals, the king stands uncovered by the side of the 
peasant, and wealth and place flaunt no titles and claim 



Every Man has his Place. 169 

no privileges. In religion, all men kneel and worship a 
common Lord. Men are placed in different positions 
in this world simply because there is a great variety of 
work to do, and no one man can do all kinds. If you 
and I have found our places-»-if we find ourselves en- 
gaged in doing that thing which, on the whole, we can 
do better than any thing else, then low discontent with 
our lot is not only sinful but mean. God gives to you 
and to me just as many sources of innocent happiness 
as he has given to anybody, and opens to us just as fair 
a heaven as he has opened to anybody. It becomes us, 
therefore, to fill our places, and do our particular duties 
well, hold up our heads in front of every man with self- 
respectful complacency, do honor to the office which 
God has selected for us. by a faithful performance of 
its functions, and take and pocket contentedly the 
penny a day which we get in common with others. 
The Creator doubtless knew what weak, unreasonable, 
and inconsistent creatures we should be when he made 
us ; but if you and I had made a world full of people, 
and set them at work with pledge of even pay and 
equal piivilege in all essential good, and they had set 
themselves to erecting artificial distinctions among 
themselves, and gone to whining over the parts we had 
assigned to them, we should be exceedingly disap- 
pointed, not to say disgusted. 

Still, we may all look up. There are steps to be 



170 Gold-Foil. 



climbed in life, but we can only climb them worthily 
by becoming fit for the ascent. It is only after becom- 
ing prepared for important places, through the educa- 
tion involved in the intelligent and faithful discharge 
of the duties of the place in which we find ourselves, 
that it is best, or even proper, that w r e be advanced. 
It is not those who pine and whine, and quarrel with 
their lot, who are apt to change it for one w r hich the 
w r orld calls better. Aspiration, worthy ambition, de- 
sire for higher good for good ends — all these indicate a 
soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the Good 
Father who would call us homeward toward himself — 
all these are the ground and justification of a Christian 
discontent ; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding 
spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing 
but the infernal. So while God gives you and me the 
privilege of being as happy as any other man, and 
makes us responsible for nothing more than he gives us, 
let us be contented, and, 

" Still achieving, still pursuing, 
Learn to labor and to wait." 



XV. 

INDOLENCE AND INDUSTRY. 

* Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man." 

' Constant occupation prevents temptation." 
'Idle men arc the Devil's play-fellows." 

* Business is the salt of life." 



"UMAISTITT is constitutionally lazy. I have yet 
to see the first child take naturally to steady 
work, or the first young man look forward with no de- 
sire to an age of ease. There are multitudes of men 
who love work, but they have learned to love it, and have 
learned that they are made truly happier by it. We are 
all looking forward to some golden hour when we may 
14 retire from business," read the newspapers at leisure, 
drive a pair of steady bay horses, walk to the post- 
office with a well-fed belly and a gold-headed cane, and 
be free. I do not believe that any man ever became 
thoroughly industrious, save under the impulsion of 



172 Gold-Foil. 

motives outside of the attractions of labor. We labor, 
because it is necessary for us to labor for sustenance, or 
to achieve an object of ambition, or because idleness is 
felt to be a greater evil than labor. The number of 
potatoes unearthed in the world "for the fun of it," 
would not feed a flock of sheep. In fact, I believe that 
God made us lazy for a purpose. He did not intend 
that we should have any thing but air and water cost- 
less. If labor were a pleasure, we should have really 
to pay for nothing, and, as a consequence, we should 
prize nothing that we have. All values have their basis 
in cost, and labor is the first cost of every thing on 
which we set a price. But labor has a higher end than 
this, and I will try to reveal it. 

Every man and woman is born into the world with 
a stock of vitality which must be expended in some 
way. It may be breathed out in unnecessary sleep, or 
appropriated wholly to the digestion of unnecessary 
food, and a good deal of it runs to waste in these ways. 
It may be expended in sport and in play, it may be ex- 
hausted in sickness, or it may be applied to labor. 
This vitality is naturally a restless principle. In the 
boy, to whom existence is fresh, we find it unchained, 
and betraying itself in antics and races, and foolhardy 
feats, and various play. It impels him to exercise and 
activity in all places and at all times. This vitality is 
alike the basis of mental and muscular power. Forth 



Indolence and Industry. 173 

from it proceeds all action whatsoever. When we pos- 
sess it, we live ; when it leaves us, we die. 

This vitality is, then, the matrix, as it is the meas- 
ure, of inherent power ; yet one man with a given 
stock of vitality may have a hundred times the practi- 
cal power of another man whose stock of vitality is the 
same, the reason being that the organs of action^ 
through which vitality manifests itself, and by which it 
works, .are better trained in one case than in the other. 
Use is the condition of development of all the powers 
of the body and the soul. Facility of action comes by 
habit. A man from any outside profession, obliged to 
write a daily brace of leaders for the newspaper, would 
break down in six months, while the accustomed editor 
would not find himself fatigued beyond his wont. The 
greatest mind in the nation would find itself perplexed 
and exhausted in the attempt to make a horse-shoe, 
while some humble apprentice of the smithy would 
make one of superior excellence with comparative ease. 
The greater the facility that may be acquired in the 
use of organs and faculties, the smaller the draft will 
be upon the vitality that feeds them. The reason why 
some men accomplish so much more than others is not, 
generally, that they have more vitality than others, 
but that the facility of labor which use and habit have 
given them enables them to do more without vital ex- 
haustion. 



174 Gold-Foil. 



Now life means but little unless it means that we 
are in a state of education — a condition in which our 
powers and faculties are to be educed. If we are not 
in training for something, this life is one of the most 
serious of all practical jokes. Labor in all its variety, 
corporeal and mental, is the instituted means for the 
methodical development of all our powers, under the 
direction and control of will. Through the channels 
of labor this vitality is to be directed. Into practical 
results of good to ourselves and others it is all to flow, 
and those results will prescribe the method which we 
need. It is to secure this great end of development 
that the prizes of life are placed before us as things to 
be worked for. When we get these prizes, they seem 
small ; and, intrinsically, they are of but little value. 
They are, in fact, little better than diplomas that testify 
of long labor, worthily performed. Still before us rises 
worthier good, to stimulate us to harder labor and 
higher achievement. Still the will urges on the organs 
of the body and the faculties of the mind till that habit 
which is second nature gives them the law of action, 
and employment itself becomes its own exceeding great 
reward. 

Still, the most industrious of us feel, at times, that 
we are laboring by compulsion. Often both the spirit 
and the flesh are unwilling and weak. We are goaded 
to labor by need. We are urged to labor because we 



Indolence and Industry. 175 

cannot enjoy our leisure. We labor because we are 
ashamed to be idle. Many a man, bowed down by his 
daily toil, looks forward to the grave for rest ; and 
far be it from me to tell him that he is looking and 
hoping for that which he will never experience. I do 
not believe there will be any hurry in eternity, or any 
such necessity of labor as we have here. If I have a 
competent comprehension of the spiritual estate, it will 
tax us but little for food and clothing ; and if the labor 
to which we devote ourselves here shall train us to 
facility in the use of our powers, the work that will be 
given to us to do there will be something to be grate- 
ful for. We shall have ail the rest we want. A sleep 
of a century will make no inroads upon our time, if we 
need any such sleep. But I have an idea that when 
the clogs are off, and the old feeling of youth comes 
back, we shall be glad to have something to do, and 
that the use of powers which labor has trained under 
the direction of will for' worthy ends will be everlast- 
ing play, as keenly enjoyed as the play of the rest- 
less boy. 

It is only as we look upon labor in this light that 
we understand its real value and significance. If the 
prizes we win here are all the reward that labor brings, 
it pays but poorly. But labor, like all the passages 
through which God would lead our life, is full of inci- 
dental rewards. The man who carves the channel of a 



laborious life, taps the springs of tributary joys through 
every mile. Health is an incident of powers well 
trained and industriously employed. Self-respect wells 
up in the heart of him whose energies, under the con- 
trol of his will, are directed to worthy ends. Popular 
regard crowns him who is a worthy worker. The 
sleep of the laboring man is sweet, and none but he 
knows the luxury of fatigue. Temptation flies from 
the earnest and contented laborer, and preys upon the 
brain and heart of the idler. Labor brings men into 
sympathy with the worthy men of the world. So, 
there is enough of joy to be found in labor, if we will 
only mark its source, to encourage and content us, even 
if the great end of labor be somewhat hidden from us, 
as it doubtless is from multitudes of men. 

This vitality of which I have been talking will find 
vent somewhere. If, under the direction of the will, 
it is not taxed for the support of methodical labor, it 
will demonstrate its nature in irregular ways. Wherever 
we find- a profession or calling, excellence in which de- 
mands great vital power, and exercise in which taxes 
that vital power but little, or only for brief periods of 
time, there we shall find vitality seeking demonstration 
through the passions. No person can be a great sing- 
er, a great actor, a great orator, or a great writer 
without great vitality. In the case of the singer, the 
actor and the orator, this vitality^ absolutely necessary 



Indolence and Industry. 177 



for great success, is only subject to draft on occasions. 
In the lives of all these people there are long intervals 
of repose, in which the unused energies seek expendi- 
ture. As a natural consequence, they are subject to 
great temptations, and their lapses from virtue are no- 
torious. I would traduce no class of persons in the 
world. There are among these classes as pure and 
noble men and women as are to be found in any class, 
and the purer and nobler because their virtue costs 
them something. There is always something peculiarly 
dangerous in a calling that requires great vitality at 
irregular intervals ; and the followers of such callings 
should understand the philosophy of their danger, and 
guard themselves with peculiar care. 

This will illustrate very well the influence of idle- 
ness upon the morals. There are those in the world 
upon whose vitality labor makes no draft whatever. 
They are not subject even at intervals to legitimate 
expenditures of vitality ; but they have it, and, unless 
impotent in will or imbecile in passion, that vitality 
will have expenditure. Xo truly Christian man can be 
truly an indolent man. He must necessarily have es- 
tablished legitimate channels of methodical, vital ex- 
penditure, or his Christianity will be a very weak affair. 
There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who 
possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but 
sin. A man who has nothing to do is the devil's play- 
s'* 



178 Gold-Foil. 



fellow. He has no choice in the matter. He can find 
no sympathy anywhere else. Good men find nothing 
in him congenial. Industrious men have no time to 
devote to him, and would have no sympathy with him 
if they had. All the decent world is in league against 
an idle man. Everybody despises him, whether he be 
rich or poor. Everybody feels that he is a nuisance — 
that he is a sneak, who refuses to employ the powers 
with which he has been endowed, and declines to con- 
tribute his quota to the support of the race. He is 
driven by the very necessity of his position into secret 
or open vice, and he finds in obedience to the -calls of 
temptation the only delights that season an otherwise 
insipid life. 

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man. A man 
whose will refuses to direct the vitality within him into 
regular channels of labor — who simply feeds and sleeps, 
or nurses his passions and his appetites— whose highest 
satisfaction comes from sense — is as good as dead and 
buried. Of what use is such a man in the world, to 
himself or others ? If he w T ill not work, he is a burden 
upon society, even if he prey upon a pile of inherited 
wealth. That wealth, if he were out of the way, would 
pass into better hands ; and the world has need of it 
for its workers. No man has a right to be idle if he 
can get work to do, even if he be as rich as Croesus, 
simply because he cannot be an idle man without in* 



Indolence and Industry. 179 

jury to himself and to society. He destroys his own 
happiness, buries his powers of usefulness, and furnishes 
to the world a pestilent example. 

If any rich young man read these words, I have 
something of importance to say to him. Your father, 
either by business enterprise or family inheritance, is 
rich. You know the amount of his wealth, and you 
know there is enough of it to support you while you 
live, without labor. Here is a great temptation. As 
I have said before, humanity is constitutionally lazy ; 
and when you see how severely the prizes of life are to 
be struggled for, you naturally shrink from the sharp, 
and, what seems to be, the unnecessary competition. 
There is also, perhaps, in your mind, a prejudice against 
labor. It may not appear to you a very genteel thing 
to tie yourself to a daily round of duties. You like to 
be independent, and to show that you are so. Now 
be very careful here, or you will make the great mis- 
take of your life — a mistake which some day you will 
be willing to give all your wealth to recall. I know 
that you cannot be happy without fulfilling the end of 
your being, and so do you. I know that you cannot 
fulfil the end of your being without the thorough de- 
velopment of your powers by the regular, systematic 
expenditure of your vitality in labor. I know that un- 
less you do this, time will be left upon your hands to 
be dreamed away alone, or inflicted as a bore upon 



180 Gold-Foil. 



others who have something to do, or to be filled up by 
ministry to appetites which will degrade you. So I 
say to you, never dream, for a moment, of a life of 
idleness. Such a life will curse you and injure others. 
Such a life is as unmanly as it is ungodly. It has no 
redeeming feature and no apology. Have a profession, 
or a calling, of some kind, which shall make a regular 
tax upon your powders. Only in this way can you be 
reasonably safe from low temptations, acquire self- 
respect, secure the esteem of men, and place yourself 
in sympathy with this working w r orld. 

I know that there are many who are obliged to 
work too hard— w 7 hose vitality is taxed beyond measure, 
and beyond the profit of the organs and faculties by 
which it is expended. While this fact is partly owing 
to the multiplicity and extravagance of artificial wants, 
it might be greatly modified by a more universal adop- 
tion of the habit of labor. The burdens of the w T orld 
are unequally borne. A great multitude live without 
labor; they are drones in the hive. A still greater 
multitude live by their wits ; and over all this country 
— never more than at the present time — is there a dis- 
position to gain wealth out of the regular channels of 
business. The real " English" of this mode of acquir- 
ing wealth is to get it without earning it — a way of 
legally gaining possession of what others have earned 
by the sweat of their brows. Nearly all the popular 



Indolence and Industry. 181 

modes and means of speculation are modes and means 
of legal gambling. ISTot a dollar is produced in the 
world that is not either taken from the ground, or 
pulled from the sea by somebody ; and it is a shameful 
fact, that the popular means of winning wealth contem- 
plate its acquisition without a particle of labor be- 
stowed upon its production. I do not believe that 
wealth won in this way is the right way. There is a 
legitimate business of mediation between producers and 
consumers, and a legitimate line of service to both, but 
further than this, all those who seek for wealth without 
adding a grain to the general stock, are leeches, 
sponges, nuisances. 

There is a more honorable way. There are legiti- 
mate offices of service to the world for Av'hich the world 
will pay well; and, in one of these, at least, every man 
should have a place, and there do the work of his life, 
winning competence as he will, and wealth if he may. 
Wealth, legitimately acquired, is valuable, and it is only 
valuable when thus acquired. Honest labor for the 
world is the only true basis of wealth, and the grand 
prerequisite for its enjoyment. I have said that every- 
body looks forward to the time when he can retire from 
business. There may be something in this beyond the 
the natural laziness of men, or their desire for ease. It 
may be that some intuition of the soul overleaps its 
earthly life, and, seeing the heavenly goal but dimly, 



182 Gold-Foil. 



plants its reward of labor on this side the river, when 
it should be placed among the gardens upon the oth^* 
bank. Be that as it may, retiring from business has 
most commonly proved a disastrous operation. 

There are old men and old women whose work of 
life is really done, and who may in peace and content 
sit down and wait their mysterious transit. We love 
these weary workers, and bid them be happy. But a 
man who retires from business before the work of life 
is done, in the full possession of his powers, retires from 
happiness and health. Hi's stock of vitality is unexpend- 
ed ; and uneasy and discontented must his life be, un- 
less that vitality find an outlet through legitimate chan- 
nels. A life of active business carves deep channels, 
and it is very liard to change them. Better far to die 
in the old harness than to try to put on another. But 
all may look forward to an age of leisure, lying in the 
unknown land, where powers, trained to ease of action 
by labor, will find themselves fed by a vitality immortal 
as that in which abide the springs of all power. 



XVI. 



THE SINS OF OUR NEIGHBORS. 

"Ton have daily to do with the Devil, and pretend to be frightened at a 
mouse." 

" Don't measure other people's corn "by your own bushel." 



THERE is little in the conduct and condition of 
men that is not the subject of a false valuation; 
and I can imagine nothing, save larger hearts and more 
plentiful brains, that would be of so much use to the 
world as a catalogue of sins, arranged upon an intelli- 
gible scale, so that their comparative enormity might 
be settled at a glance. Such a catalogue might serve 
a good purpose, generally, perhaps, by pointing out the 
real sinners of the world, and thus bringing the mate- 
rials of society to their true level ; but its chief bene- 
fits would inure to those who are in the habit of over- 
estimating their own virtues, under-estimating their 
own vices, attaching fictitious importance to the sins of 



184 



Gold-Foil. 



others, and clothing in the crimson of crime acts and 
practices as harmless and sinless as the prattle of chil- 
dren, as well as to those who 



" Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
By damning those they have no mind to." 

There are men, for instance, who attach a peculiar 
merit to the entertainment of a certain set of theo- 
logical opinions — who entertain those opinions very de- 
cidedly, and maintain them wonderfully well, while 
they make dissent an absolute sin, and regard dissenters 
w r ith pity, and contempt. There are men who judge 
their neighbors with great uncharitableness ; who drive 
hard bargains; who gamble in stocks; who are self- 
righteous and censorious; w T ho fail in tenderness to- 
ward God's poor ; who never pay what they ought to 
pay for the support of the religious institutions to 
which they are attached, yet who would consider a social 
dance in their own parlor a terrible sin, and a game of 
whist a high crime that should call down the judgments 
of Heaven. There are men who stalk about the world 
gloomy, and stiff, and severe — self-righteous embodi- 
ments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of 
peace and good-will to all mankind — the religion of 
love, and hope, and joy — the religion that bathes the 
universal human soul in the light of parental love, and 
opens to mankind the gates of immortality — is a re- 



The Sins of our Neighbors. 185 

ligion of terror — men guilty of misrepresenting Christ 
to the world, and doing incalculable damage to his 
cause, yet who find it in them to rebuke the careless 
laughter that bubbles up from a maiden's heart that 
God has filled with life and gladness. 

This fallacious estimate of the respective qualities and 
magnitudes of sins has not only blinded the reason and 
befooled the conscience of the world, but it has spoiled 
its language by parallel processes of exaggeration and 
emasculation. Little words, that legitimately repre- 
sent little things, have become monstrous words, repre- 
senting monstrous things. Great sins have pleasant 
words attached to them, which serve as masks by which 
they find their way into good society without suspicion. 
Individual notions — no bigger than a man's hand, at 
first — have* spread themselves into overshadowing ec- 
clesiastical dogmas. Phrases have been invested by the 
schools with illegitimate meanings and deceptive sanc- 
tity. The age is an age of words, and is ruled by 
words rather than things; and there is hardly one of 
them that has not shrunk from its original garments, or 
outgrown them. Men are saved by words, and damned 
by words. Religion rides the nominal and casuistry 
the technical ; and the unfortunate wight who does not 
get out of the way will be crushed by words, or run 
through by a fatal phrase. 

The religious newspapers of the day are full of 



186 Gold-Foil. 



quarrels about words — quarrels instituted in the name 
of the Prince of Peace, and carried on for the benefit 
of the Prince of Darkness — quarrels over non-essential 
matters of opinion — quarrels growing out of rivalries 
of sects — quarrels fed by the fires of human passion — 
quarrels maintained by the pride of opinion and by the 
ambition for intellectual mastery — -quarrels whose only 
tendency is to disgust the world with the religion in 
whose behalf they are professedly instituted, and to 
fret, and wound, and divide the followers of Jesus 
Christ. Yet these same religious papers will deplore 
the personal collision of two drunken congressmen in 
the streets of Washington as a sad commentary on the 
degeneracy of the age, and moralize solemnly over a 
dog-fight. They can lash each other with little mercy 
— they can call each other names, abuse each other's 
motives, misconstrue each other's language, criminate 
and recriminate, but faint quite away with seeing a cart- 
horse over-whipped, or a race-horse over-tasked. They 
have daily to do with the devil, and pretend to be 
frightened at a mouse. 

What is true of the controversial religious news- 
papers, is true, I fear, of a great many Christian men 
and women. They have pet sins — poodle sins — with 
silky white hair — sins held in by a social collar and a 
religious ribbon — that bark at good honest dogs, or 
imaginary clogs, although their little eyes are red with 



The Sins of our Neighbors. 187 

the devil that is in them. As sectarians, they are given 
to slander. They speak disparagingly of those who 
differ with them in belief. They judge uncharitably 
those who engage in practices which only their particu- 
lar dictionary makes diabolical. They blacken a mul- 
titude of good deeds by dipping them into bad mo- 
tives of their own steeping. ]STow, if I were called 
upon to decide which, in my opinion, is the least sinful 
in itself, and the least demoralizing in its tendency — 
the traducing of one of Christ's disciples by another of 
Christ's disciples, or engaging in or witnessing a horse- 
race- — I should turn my back on the traducer and shake 
hands with the jockey. 

I know men not religious, who bear about an ex- 
ceedingly sensitive idea of honor that scorns all little- 
ness and meanness and trickery — chivalrous men — 
reliable men — men really of pure lives and honest and 
honorable impulses — yet men so warped in their reason 
and their moral nature that they will follow their party 
leaders through all the treacheries, perjuries, and in- 
norninable rascalities that party leaders, driven to des- 
perate straits, can invent ; who stand squarely up to 
the endorsement of deceit, injustice, robbery, and mur- 
der ; who pamper and patronize the most brutal and 
dangerous elements of society, and who give money to 
be used for party purposes that they have no reasona- 
ble doubt will be directed to the corruption of the bal- 



188 Gold-Foil. 



lot-box. I know women of delicate instincts and really 
modest natures who turn the cold shoulder to a fallen 
'sister — passing her with a shuddering sense of pollu- 
tion — yet who gladly associate with, and even marry, 
men who are notorious for their infamous gallantries — 
yielding to the salute of the seducer the lip that curled^ 
with scorn in the presence of his victim. 

I have dealt thus far in matters of fact. They are 
patent ; everybody apprehends them. I will go still 
further in these matters of fact, and declare that it 
may be recorded, as a rule pretty universally reliable, 
that a man or woman who is particularly severe upon 
the minor sins of mankind — who lacks compassion for 
the fallen, and consideration for the weak and tempted 
— carries, nine times in ten, a large sin, w T ith a little 
name, in the sleeve. Those who see much to find fault 
with in others, and who are prone to magnify and 
dwell upon the shortcomings of their neighbors, are 
those who have an interest in depreciating the life and 
character around them. Men do not work for nothing. 
They work for pay ; and when I see one who seems 
particularly desirous of depreciating others, I know it 
is only for the purpose of bringing them down to the 
mean standard which he is conscious measures his own 
life. 

Is this uncharitable ? I think not. Is it not al- 
ways the purest woman who is the last to suspect im- 



The Sins of our Neighbors. 189 

purity in other women, the most unwilling to believe 
ill of her neighbor, the first charitably to palliate the 
offences of those who fall, and the first to give them 
the hand of sympathy ? Is not the Christ within them 
always saying — " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and 
sin no more ? " Is it not always the noblest man who 
deals the easiest with the foible? of his neighbor ? Is 
it not always the best man who is busiest with looking 
after his own sins, and. who has neither time nor dispo- 
sition to discover and denounce those of others ? Is it 
not always the most Christlike Christian who esteems 
others better than himself, and who modestly re- 
gards his own heart as altogether untrustworthy ? I 
think so. 

"Who art thou that judgest another man's ser- 
vant ? M Who gave you authority to measure other 
people's corn by your particular bushel ? Who gave 
you liberty to thrust forward your fallible judgment, 
your warped and weak reason, your little notions, your 
uncharitable heart, your long and lathy creed, and your 
rule of life taken at second hand, and badly damaged 
at that — as the standard of the great world's life ? 
Why will you be always sallying out to break lances 
with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not 
capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride ? 
Doubtless the world is wicked enough, but it will not 
be improved by the extension of a spirit which self- 



190 Gold-Foil. 



righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than 
in itself. Doubtless there are great sins, practiced by 
multitudes of men, but they will hardly be diminished 
by those who bring into the enterprise of extermi- 
nation a greater amount of baggage than they can 
defend. 

It so happens, in the great economy of life, that 
there is but one thing by which men may legitimately 
be judged ; and that is the heart. It so happens, also, 
that only the Being who made it is capable of judging 
it. If we are determined to measure every thing de- 
veloped by the life around us by our own bushel, let us 
first of all go to the divine standard, and get our bush- 
els " sealed." Let us endeavor to apprehend some- 
thing of the infinite love which flows out unmeasured 
from the Father's heart to every creature proceeding 
from the Father's hand. Let us recognize that essen- 
tial fact in the human constitution which renders uni- 
formity of belief and faith with relation to all truth, 
and identity of action from identity of motive, im- 
possible. 

There are no twin souls in God's universe. Each 
stands alone in its relation to each particular truth 
within the range of its apprehension. In the field of 
life, each has its standpoint, from which it observes, 
and at which it receives impressions from all the facts, 
persons, and phenomena of the field. This round world 



The Sins of our Neighbors. 191 

of ours rolls ceaselessly in the sea of light poured from 
the exhaust-less fountains of the sun. All around it, 
thick strewn with stars, bends the blue firmament. It 
seems to every man as if he were standing in the centre 
of the w r orld. The heaven that swells above him, 
skirted by a horizon that may be narrow or broad, is 
the true heaven. The constellated lights that rise and 
set upon his vision have relation to him as a kind of 
sentient centre. That which is up, is necessarily above 
his head, where his sun shines and his moon sails ; that 
which is down is beneath his feet ; and he can hardly 
conceive why his antipodes do not die of apoplexy, or 
drop out of the system of things into the ethereal abyss. 
So this world of human life revolves, a perfect sphere, 
in the eye of God. So embracing it all around — a 
fathomless heaven at every angle and aspect — sweeps 
the firmament of his love, on which eternal principles 
glow with steady flame, holding to rhythm and har- 
mony the constellated truths which wheel around and 
among them. It doubtless seems to every soul that it 
sits in the centre of all this great system of things — 
that God is directly above it — that the essential truths 
which have relation to life are those, and only those, 
that come within the range of its vision ; and it won- 
ders how other souls can possibly live and thrive while 
looking out upon God and the firmament of love and 
truth from other points of vision. Yet, as a matter of 



192 Gold-Foil. 



fact, all Christian men see the same sun, and the same 
heaven of truth — only they see them from different 
angles. 

I am aware that the two subjects which I have as- 
sociated together in this article only touch each other 
at certain points ; but those are important ones, and 
justify that which might otherwise appear far-fetched 
and arbitrary. My aim has simply been to arouse the 
mind of the reader to a more just and impartial esti- 
mate of those acts denominated sins, and to refer the 
minds of those who are inclined to sit in judgment 
upon their fellows, to the legitimate standard of judg- 
ment. A man does not necessarily sin who does that 
which our reason and our conscience condemn. A 
man is not necessarily in error who entertains views 
and opinions widely different from ours. We are con- 
stantly prone to fix arbitrary values upon our own 
good deeds, and to exaggerate evils that we see in 
other systems of belief, and sins that we see in other 
men. The true Christian charity is doubtless that 
which grows out of true Christian love. Essential 
Christian brotherhood is doubtless based in the com- 
mon possession and entertainment of the divine life, 
though that life exist amid error and sin and igno- 
rance, through the wide range of differing beliefs. But 
if we cannot have these realized as Ave w T ould have 
them, we can have something which counterfeits them, 



The Sins of our Neighbors. 193 

and is better, on the whole, than nothing. We can 
have a charity growing ont of a common conscious- 
ness of weakness, shortsightedness and sin, and a broth- 
erhood of common imperfection. * 




XVII. 

THE CANONIZATION OF THE VICIOUS. 

" Carrion crows bewail the dead sheep, and then eat them." 
" ' Ladies have ladies 1 whims,' said Crazy Ann, when she draggled her cloak 
in the gutter. 1 ' 

"The dog gets into the mill under cover of the ass." 
" He that spares vice wrongs virtue. 1 ' 



A!~ 



S there is one class of men in the world which is 
interested in magnifying the sins of others, so 
there is another, hardly less numerous, bent upon mak- 
ing the sins of others respectable. Out of this disposi- 
tion and policy spring many of the celebrations of the 
birth-days of men whose lives have successfully asso- 
ciated splendid genius with ungovernable passions, great 
intellectual achievements with detestable vices, and ad- 
mirable works with weak or wicked lives. So far has 
this been carried, that there exists, more or less defi- 
nite, in the public mind, the impression that great genius 



The Canonization of the Vicious. 195 



and low morals are generally found together, and that, 
in some way, the former justifies, and, in some in. 
stances, even glorifies, the latter. A drunken physician 
is supposed to be very much better than any other phy- 
sician, " if you can only catch him when he is sober," 
and it is imagined that there is somewhere a mysterious 
but very fruitful connection between the disposition to 
sottishness and skill in the treatment of disease. 

I believe it is universally conceded that " the Man 
Christ Jesus " lived a purer life than any other man, 
sympathized with the poor and the lowly as no other 
man ever sympathized, did more for the comfort and 
the elevation of the humble and the wretched than 
any other, impressed himself upon the civilization of 
the world beyond all predecessors and successors, and 
revealed a religion which, over-arching all the elabora- 
tions of human philosophy, imparts to them whatever 
of significance they possess, and holds in itself alone 
the power of regenerating humanity ; but, outside of 
the church, there are none who, of their own motion, 
meet to celebrate his birth-day. I have never heard of 
the celebration of the birth-day of John Milton, the 
great bard who sat in darkness, and evolved his more 
than mortal dreams, and who, grappling with immortal 
themes, wrested from them immortality for himself and 
the language in which he wrote. I see no tributes paid 
by the world to the memory of Montgomery. I never 



196 Gold-Foil. 



had the opportunity of drinking a toast to the gentle 
Christian, Cowper, or filling a bumper to Isaac Watts, 
whose lyric muse has given wings to more hearts bur- 
dened with praise and surcharged with aspiration than 
that of any other man since the sweet singer of Israel. 
I have never had an invitation to a dinner given to the 
memory of Howard, whose life was one of Humanity's 
most touching poems ; or attended a supper in honor 
of Martin Luther. I find the great of the world — who 
were good in their greatness and great in their good- 
ness — pretty generally let alone by the men who are 
accustomed to express their obligations to those who 
have been pre-eminent in government, literature, and 
art, while the memory of men whose weaknesses called 
for an extra cloak of pity, and whose vices made sight 
drafts on all the ready charity in the market, were 
toasted to the echo. 

No great man who has scandalized his age by his 
personal vices, or done violence to the avowed princi- 
ples of his public life by a great apostasy, can fall with- 
out drawing to his funeral all the apostates around him 
— men clinging to him by the sympathy of vice and 
falsehood, and using that sympathy as a platform which 
shall elevate them into the respectability which his ge- 
nius won for him. Even the manes of Tom Paine is 
annually summoned into the congenial atmosphere of 
the banquet-hall, to make respectable by its power and 



The Canonization of the Vicious. 197 

fire an infidelity and libertinism which stink in the nos- 
trils of a Christian nation, and which otherwise would 
suffocate themselves in their own effluvia. 

Everybody knows how it is with the memory of 
Burns. It cannot well be doubted that more revellers 
assemble every year to celebrate his memory, through 
sympathy with the steaming whiskey which he loved so 
well, than with ,the aroma of his genius. " Poor Burns ! " 
they exclaim; "what a pity he drank!" " Gifted 
Burns ! Child of Mature ! Let us forgive him that his 
gifts were not dedicated to the promotion of the purity 
which hallows the nam as of mother, sister, and wife ! M 
" Sad dog, that Burns ! True, he loved wine and wo- 
men ; but then, didn't he suffer for it ? Let us com- 
passionate him. He wasn't so much to blame, after all. 
The only wonder is how a man, with the tremendous 
fire-works he had in him, did not blow up with the first 
flash of a woman's eyes that smote him." And thus, 
the carrion crows bewail the dead sheej), and then eat 
them. Thus, with cloaks covered with the mud of the 
gutter, they flock together to contemplate the mud 
that a prostituted genius has gathered upon its gar- 
ments, and foster their self-complacency by charitably 
transmuting its sins into whims. Thus the dogs en- 
deavor to get into the mill under cover of the ass. 

One of the most mischievous and fallacious of the 
current notions of an easily-erring world I conceive to 



198 Gold-Foil. 



be that which makes the possession of great gifts, and 
the achievement of great works, an offset to, or an 
apology for, indulgence in vices which compromise in- 
dividual and social purity, and outbreaks of passion that 
come within the cognizance of the police. I believe 
that I respect all there is to be respected in the memory 
of Burns; but he w r as a weak — in many respects a 
vicious — and, in most respects, a miserable — man. He 
was the slave of a debasing appetite, and though, at 
brief intervals, he surrendered himself to the higher 
and purer inspirations that floated down to him from 
heaven, he loved to put them aside, and envelop him- 
self in an atmosphere of sensuality. If he had a manly 
sense of manhood, wakened into life by the arrogance 
of wealth and place, it found its issue in words and not 
in life. It was the outburst of a protesting impulse 
rather than the self-assertion of a principle standing in 
the centre of the motive forces of his being. 

Burns has left enough upon record to show that he 
possessed the subtlest apprehension of all that is noble 
in religion, all that is sweet and pure in woman, all that 
is strong and fruitful in manly virtue, and all that is 
praiseworthy in individual and national character. His 
best poem, " The Cotter's Saturday Night," is a reve- 
lation, clear as light, of his knowledge of goodness, and 
his convictions touching that w r hich is noblest and 
truest in life. By a kind of necessity he, and all the 



The Canonization of the Vicious. 199 

brotherhood of vice-enslaved genius, have been made 
to reveal such a degree of knowledge of the truest 
truth and the best goodness, that all apology for their 
inconsistent and inconstant lives must be gratuitous. 
If great men have great passions, they have great 
minds with which to regulate and keep them in subjec- 
tion ; and in the degree in which God has given them 
power to move the hearts and attract the admiration 
of men, are they bound to teach, by word and pen, and 
exemplify by life, that which is truest and best in their 
convictions, and divinest in their faculties. 

There is an abundance of vice in the world that le- 
gitimately calls for our charity, but it is not that which 
is associated with such genius as fully apprehends the 
beauty and the claims of virtue. Goethe is one of the 
great — Goethe, "the many sided man," Goethe, the 
man of science, the poet, the philosopher — yet his life 
was almost an unmitigated nuisance. If he ever failed 
to be a curse to a woman with whom he was thrown 
into association, it was not because he failed in effort 
for that end. The beast that was in him toyed through 
more than a filthy half century with the most delicate 
instincts and the most sacred sympathies of the female 
nature. Yet there are those who beg us not to judge 
Goethe too harshly — who bid us remember the power 
of his passions and the license of the age in which 
he lived. It is a competent answer to this plea to say 



200 Gold-Foil. 



that Goethe was as cool a man — a man as thoroughly 
under self-control — as any whose history we know; 
and that he flagrantly scandalized even the age which 
is thrust forward as his apology. I say, that to treat 
such a life as his with any thing softer than downright 
execration — to drape it with the velvet of charity, and 
trim it with silky apologies, is an outrage — direct and 
indefensible — upon the cause of virtue in the world. 

While vice is made venial when associated with 
transcendent powers ; while tributes of honor are of- 
fered to the memory of lives perverted, by men who 
have a covert interest in making perverted lives re- 
spectable ; while even good men allow their admiration 
of genius to soften their judgments upon its prostitu- 
tion, and substitute for a well-earned condemnation, a 
magnanimous gratuity of pity, it will not be strange if 
men with smaller intellects find excuse for such license 
of appetite and passion as they may see fit to indulge in. 

Our literary Pet got drunk, and sung about it, in a 
rollicking way, and we weep and smile as we think of 
the debauchee, and say, " Poor Pet ! " Tom Jones 
gets drunk, and we kick him as he lies in the gutter, 
refuse to recognize him when he gets upon his feet, 
and blame the police if he fail to get into the watch- 
house. Our Pet, armed with the enginery of a smooth 
tongue, well practiced in all the arts of intrigue and 
deception, besieges the citadel of a woman's heart, 



The Canonization of the Vicious. 201 

and, standing once within it, sets it on fire, and lays it 
in ashes. We sigh, and say, " Sad Pet ! " Tom Jones 
betrays the confidence of his neighbor's daughter, in 
imitation of Our Pet's example, and gets his brains 
blown out, and we say it served him right. Our Pet 
was improvident. He spent his money without a 
thought of the debts he owed, or the cash he had bor 
rowed; and we say, "Unfortunate Pet! He did not 
seem to know any thing of the value of money ! " Tom 
Jones borrows money, runs in debt, and forgets to 
pay ; and we conclude that the rascal has no very 
acute sense of moral obligation — in fact, that Tom 
Jones is a swindler. Now, I have an idea that a moral 
code that is good enough for Our Pet is good enough 
for Tom Jones, and that Tom Jones has good cause of 
complaint when treated more harshly by the decent 
public than his great exemplar. 

I cannot help thinking that the indulgence with 
which great men are treated by the world, in their 
moral obliquities and eccentricities, has much to do in 
making them what they are. An unprincipled man of 
genius who can achieve and maintain power over the 
minds of good men, independently of his moral charac- 
ter, and secure at the same time the sympathy and sup- 
port of bad men, by participating in their vices, will 
always do both. The prevalent disposition which I see 
on all sides to make heroes and martyrs of the infamous 
9* 



202 



Gold-Foil. 



great, amounts to a premium on all that is despicable 
and horrible in unbridled ambition and limitless lust. 
What means the attempt of the world's greatest living 
writer to apotheosize the brute whose choice it was to 
be buried with his horse ? What will its effect be but 
to obliterate moral distinctions, and lift up for imita- 
tion a character as much out of place in this Christian 
age as a w T ild boar would be in a conference meeting ? 

Within the last three years, hundreds of thousands 
of hearts have been turned in sympathy and affection 
toward the character and life of one who sacrificed upon 
the altar of his rabid ambition hecatombs of his country- 
men, and filled all Europe with the wails and curses of 
widows and orphans, — of one who had no God higher 
than Fate, acknowledged no leader* but Destiny, and 
who, in following her, put to shame all of manhood in 
mankind by trampling under his feet a true heart and 
a sacred vow, that the Devil might give him the child 
that God had denied to him. What will the effect of 
this be upon ambitious natures, but to prove that a man 
has only to use all of the world he can lay his hands on 
for selfish ends, to secure the services of a Christian 
eulogist ? Even Aaron Burr, the infamous traitor, 
murderer, and libertine, finds a man to speak well of 
him — praise only assuming the significance of a harm- 
less joke, in consequence of the freshness of the stench 
which his memory has left behind him. 



The Canonization of the Vicious. 203 

Over all that realm, where high or humble mind is 
struggling honestly with the great problems that con- 
cern its spiritual life and its immortal destiny — strug- 
gling toward the light through devious ways of error— 
I would see a broad-winged liberality spread its lumi- 
nous shadow. To all those whose education in the 
truth has been limited, whose circumstances of life 
have been adverse to the development of purity, who 
are weak and ignorant, and low in instinct and aspira- 
tion, I would extend a charity that pities while it 
blames, and considers while it condemns. But to sin 
in high places — among men and women who are 
crowned kings and queens in the realm of intellect — 
those w T hose brows have been lifted into God's own 
light, and whose tongues and pens reveal something of 
the divinity which struggles to enthrone itself in them 
■ — no excuses, no palliations, no patronage. Over a 
great, bad life, let us sigh once, and then be silent ; and 
when we choose among the memories of memorable 
men for the subject of a public tribute or a personal 
eulogy, let us take one out of which shall spring in- 
spirations to a pure life, and motives to a noble heroism. 
When we choose heroes for deification, let them at 
least believe in the God who made them, and present 
a life for delineation and contemplation unblotched by 
all the sins forbidden by the Decalogue. 

He who spares vice or apologizes for it in the high 



204 Gold-Foil. 



places of the world, wrongs virtue in every place. He 
helps the good to look upon it leniently, and thus to 
lower the tone of morality within themselves. He as- 
sists the bad to make it respectable, and thus to give 
them warrant and license in its imitation, and even in 
its emulation. He discourages virtue in the humble 
and poor — the great masses who form the real basis of 
society, and upon w T hose goodness and truth the state 
must rely for its character before the world, and its 
stability in the world. He disturbs the moral appre- 
hensions and unsettles the moral balance of all to whom 
his words and influence come. Let us braid no more 
wreaths to hide the mark of Cain on the brow of mur- 
der. Let us send up no more clouds of incense to veil 
the front of shame. The intellect will bow, if it must, 
but let it be with a protesting tongue and arms closely 
folded over the heart ! 



MM 



XVIII. 

SOCIAL CLASSIFICATION. 

"When the crane attempts to dance with the horse, she gets broken 
bones," 

■ Like plays best with like." 

" It is dangerous to eat cherries with the great ; they throw the stones at 
four head." 

" Like seeks like— a scabbed horse and a sandy dike." 



THERE is a very general entertainment of the fal- 
lacy that all the distinctions of society are arti- 
ficial. I call it a fallacy, because I believe it to be 
susceptible of proof that the most of them are natural. 
The aristocracy of a town or state is always founded 
upon what the majority of the people of such town or 
state hold to be the chief good. Xo class arrogates to 
itself the aristocratic position without the accordance, 
tacit or declared, of all classes. Wherever noble family 
descent is popularly regarded as the most honorable of 
all things, aristocracy is founded upon blood. Wher- 



206 



Gold-Foil. 



ever high intellectual culture is accounted the most 
honorable of all possessions, the aristocracy will be 
composed of savans, poets, artists, and men and women 
of brilliant parts and attainments. So, too, where 
money is regarded universally as the chief good, alike 
by rich and poor, the aristocratic element will reside 
in wealth. It would be easy to cite specimens of these 
varieties of aristocracy. I suppose that Paris, as the 
representative of France, furnishes an instance of the 
aristocracy of talent and culture ; that London repre- 
sents England in its aristocracy of blood, and that New 
York represents America in the aristocracy of wealth. 
In each of these types there is a blending of the other 
two. The three herd together, more or less, but the 
nucleus is distinct in each, and the other elements 
crystallize around it. 

So I say that the aristocracy of any country is 
nothing more than a declaration, in conventional form, 
of that country's sentiment and opinion upon the chief 
earthly end of man. Every aristocrat is made such by 
a popular vote ; and by the same vote is he endowed 
with all the privileges, immunities, pride, supercilious- 
ness, and exclusiveness which are supposed to pertain 
to the aristocratic estate. It matters nothing how 
humble, genial, and good a popularly constituted aristo- 
crat may be, he gets little credit for it, for the people 
regard him as a superior, who can only be humble by 



Social Claffification. 20? 



condescension, genial for a purpose, and good by ano- 
malous exception. Having entered the charmed circle 
of those who have won the highest prize of life, his old 
friends forsake him, misconstrue him, and force him 
into aristocratic association, whether he will or no. 
There is no aristocratic class in any state possessing in- 
stitutions measurably free, which can sustain itself foi 
ten years beyond the choice and voice of the people. 

I have no idea that while human society exists 
there will fail to exist an aristocratic element, for so 
long as human society exists there will exist a popular 
ideal of a chief good, the achievement of that good by 
a fortunate few, and the association of that fortunate 
few, by natural affinity and corresponding position. 
If this class exist, other classes will exist, receding, by 
grades more or less distinctly defined, to the lowest 
figure of the scale — all measurably regulated by this 
idea of the chief good and the degree of its attain- 
ment ; measurably, I say, for there are subordinate 
standards of respectability, as well as affinities of natu- 
ral temperament and business pursuit, that come in as 
modifying influences. So I. say that classes exist in 
society by a law as immutable as any law. They al- 
ways have existed, and they always will — their charac- 
ter determined by the character and aims of the peo- 
ple, and their relations regulated by the spirit of the 
people. 



2'08 Gold-Foil. 



On this track of general statement I proceed to the 
lesson of this article. The more readily to arrive at- 
this lesson, let ns institute an experiment. Let us 
bring together, to form a single social assembly, repre- 
sentatives from each of the classes that we know, and 
see how they will get along together. Let us shut 
into a single parlor a Marquis, a savan, a Croesus, a 
farmer, a merchant, a tallow-chandler, a blacksmith, an 
Irish hod-carrier, a stage-driver, a dancing-master, a 
fop, a fool, and a fiddler. They come together for 
social enjoyment ; and the question as to how much 
of that article they will be able to obtain is that to 
which. I ask an answer. All the probabilities are 
against any thing like enjoyment. There are no tastes 
accordant, no pursuits common, no habits of thought 
at all similar, no common ground of communion. I 
can imagine no other position in which any member of 
the company could be placed where he would be more 
utterly miserable. The* hod-carrier would probably 
feel the worst of the whole number, and would wish 
himself a thousand times on the topmost round of a 
seven-story ladder, while only the fool would be the 
subject of envy. 

We should have, in an experiment like this, the de- 
monstration of the truth of one of our proverbs, that 
" like plays best with like." There is not, and there 
can never be, social enjoyment without social sym- 



Social Clarification. 209 

pathy. In all healthfully organized social life there 
must be correspondence of position, of education, of 
moral sentiment, and of habits of thought and life — a 
correspondence with limits of variation which every 
class tacitly acknowledges. This sympathy is born of 
facts, and not of will. A man sees a circle with which 
he has had no association ; and, as he deems its en- 
trance desirable, he accomplishes his desire, only to 
find himself a discordant element, and, consequently, 
an unhappy one. In short, there is a class with wh.ch 
each man has more sympathy than with any other 
class, — a class in which he finds himself the happiest 
and the most at home. Therefore he belongs in this 
class, socially ; and he will go above it, if there be any 
thing above it, and below it, if there be any thing be- 
low it, only to make himself, and those with whom he 
associates, uncomfortable. 

I have frequently noticed the operation of this law 
in a large circle of women met to prosecute an object 
of benevolence, as in the sewing circles connected with 
the various religious organizations. They meet for a 
common object. They all have respect for each other, 
and a pleasant word for each other. There are no 
jealousies and no rivalries. They pass their afternoon 
and evening happily, and separate with mutual good 
feeling ; yet one who knows them all sees the secret 
of their concord, in the way in which they associate. 



210 Gold-Foil. 



Never, unless a directly opposing design, instituted for 
a purpose, interfere, do they mingle indiscriminately 
The rooms where they meet, and even the corners of 
the rooms, are so many nuclei of crystallization, around 
which sympathetic social elements arrange themselves 
for communion and happiness. They follow the general 
law inside of their organization, just as naturally as 
they do out of it. Like talks best with like, laughs 
best with like, w T orks best with like, and enjoys best 
with like ; and it cannot help it. Therefore, let like 
come together with like everywhere, nor seek to pre- 
vent it, for social position, under the general law, ele- 
vates no one and depresses no one. It is simply a 
classification of individualities, according to conditions 
and sympathies which exist independent of class, and 
which would exist all the same were they not brought 
into association. 

I have thus exhibited what I believe to be the 
rational basis of social classification — a law as certain 
in its operation as the law of chemical affinity, and one 
which I believe to be founded in unmixed benevolence. 
I have done it for the purpose of exhibiting the un- 
reasonableness and the mischief of jealousy between 
classes, and especially that entertained by classes nomi- 
nally low in the social scale toward those nominally 
high. A man in the lower class may be as good as a 
man in the higher. He may, in fact, be much better ; 



Social Clarification. 211 

but so long as he combines with others in making the 
chief earthly good to reside in wealth rather than wis- 
dom, in gold rather than goodness, he must not com- 
plain if those who get wealth get superior position, 
while wisdom and goodness are at a discount. The 
spirit and aim of a nation inevitably fix the basis of its 
aristocracy. This nation is mad for gold, and those 
who get it will inevitably be the central and controlling 
element in the nation's highest social class. There is 
no way under heaven to change this fact but by chang- 
ing the popular aim. Make high culture or great ex- 
cellence of character the leading aim of the country, 
and then you will get your chance. All that goodness 
and wisdom enjoy of social eminence, save in special 
localities, is through the patronage of wealth. This I 
state as the general fact with relation to this country. 
In other countries, where the leading aristocratic ele- 
ment resides in nobility, or intellectual pre-eminence, 
these respectively become the patrons of the elements 
thrown into inferior relation. 

Every man is a common centre of multiplied circles 
of association. First in order is the family circle ; em- 
bracing that is the circle of remoter kindred ; beyond 
that, at longer or shorter distances, sweeps around the 
social circle. Then comes the circle of religious fra- 
ternity ; then the political circle ; then the broad circle 
of human brotherhood, embracing family, kindred, so- 



212 Gold-Foil. 



ciety, the church, the state, and the world ; and still 
more broadly sweeping, runs the golden chain that en- 
closes each soul m the universe within the sphere of 
relation to all created intelligences. These are all 
natural circles — or circles dependent on natural law for 
their definition. Family and kindred are based in nat- 
ural affection, growing out of identity of blood. So- 
ciety is based in natural affinity and similarity and sym- 
pathy of position and pursuit. The church is formed 
by sympathy of religious belief; the state by a common 
political creed and common institutions ; and so on to 
the utmost boundary of relationship. From each minor 
circle all outside of it are shut out ; yet, as the circles 
enlarge, all come upon a common level. In the state, 
we are fellow-citizens ; in the church, we are Christian 
brethren. In all our higher and more majestic rela- 
tions, the hands of mankind are joined. We sit at the 
same communion table, we bow to the same law and 
the same Lord, we cast an equal ballot. 

Now, as to the matter of duty with relation to 
these social circles ; no man should despise the circle 
n which he finds himself, but should seek to elevate 
and make it better. There are positions of power and 
usefulness in each circle, worthy of any man's ambition ; 
while the entrance to another circle, nominally higher, 
under the patronage of its central, controlling element, 
is a disgrace to any man. A man willingly patronized, 



Social Clarification. 213 



is a man voluntarily disgraced ; and a man who seeks 
for respectability in a social position into which he does 
not naturally fall, shows himself to be lacking both in 
sense and self-respect. 

Nothing but a popular change in the standard of 
respectability can ever make the first social classes in 
this country what they should be ; and that change, 
sooner or later, will as surely come as the redemption 
of the world to the highest type of Christian manhood 
shall come. When manhood becomes the leading ob- 
ject of humanity, then the books of heraldry, and the 
diplomas of the schools, and the ledgers of wealth, will 
cease to furnish passports to respectability. Until that 
period shall arrive, wealth and blood and intellectual 
attainment, without the slightest reference to morality 
or religion, as standards of character and life, will hold 
the social sway of the world. And this is right. It is 
as God made it, and would have it. It is the result of 
the operation of one of his irreversible laws. It is the 
popular penalty of a popular sin. To hasten the arrival 
of that period, it should be the aim of every man, 
laboring faithfully and diligently where God has placed 
him, to elevate the standard of respectability to the 
place where God would have it. Whenever the great 
popular voice practically declares that Christian man- 
hood is the chief good, Christian manhood will take its 
position at the head of the social life of this country. 



214 Gold-Foil. 



and of the world. Then, if a man be not admitted to 
it, it will simply be because he is not good enough ; 
for like will come together with like, by a natural law, 
I would not say that there is no Christian manhood 
in the aristocracy of this country. I believe there is — 
that there is as much there as anywhere. I simply say 
that Christian manhood and womanhood are not cre- 
dentials which of themselves secure high social recog- 
nition. They achieve their position by circumstance, 
and not by character ; for the successful stock-gambler 
and the libertine stand side by side with them, upon an 
equal footing. That this fact should not be, is very evi- 
dent ; that this fact is, is chargeable upon all classes 
alike ; and they have no just cause of quarrel with it, so 
long as they manifest no disposition to change it, by in- 
stituting another standard. 



if Ti 



XIX. 



THE PRESERVATION OF CHARACTER. 

" A full vessel must be carried carefully." 
" He is so full of himself that he is quite empty." 

"If you had had fewer friends and more enemies you had been a better 
man." 

" That is often lost in an hour which costs a lifetime." 



AN observing man is never without sources of 
amusement, and it is certain that among these 
sources the unconscious devices resorted to for the 
creation and preservation of character, in the eye of 
the world, deserve a prominent place. We meet in 
ever}' town men who feel that they have filled up the 
measure of their character, and have nothing further to 
do in life but to bear that character, like a full vessel, 
to their graves, without spilling a drop. They walk the 
streets as if they were bearing it upon their heads. 
They bow to their acquaintances with the conscious- 



216 Gold-Foil. 



ness of their precious burden constantly uppermost. 
They refrain from all complication with the stirring 
questions of the times through fear of a fatal jostle. 
They speak guardedly, as if a word might jar their 
priceless vase from the poise of continence. There is 
nothing so important to them as what they are pleased 
to consider their character; consequently, that is al- 
always to be consulted before any course of action can 
be determined upon. All questions of morality and 
reform, all matters of public or political interest, all 
personal associations, are considered primarily with 
reference to this character. If they prove to be con- 
sistent with it, and seem calculated to reveal something 
more of its glory, they are entered upon, or adopted ; 
otherwise, they are discarded. 

When a man arrives at a point where the preserva- 
tion of his character becomes the prime object of his 
life, he may be considered a harmless man, but one 
upon whom no further dependence can be placed in 
carrying on the work of the world. As a member of 
society, he becomes strictly ornamental. We point to 
him as one of the ripe fruits of our civilization. We 
bring him out on great occasions, and show him. We 
make him president of conventions and benevolent as- 
sociations. We introduce strangers to him that they 
may be impressed. We chronicle his arrival at the ho- 
tels. We burn incense before him, because we know 



The Preiervation of Character. 217 



it will please him, and because we know that he rather 
expects it. Small children regard him in respectful si- 
lence as he passes. He becomes one of our institutions, 
like a City Hall or an old church. We always know 
where to find him, as we do a well-established town- 
line. But one thing we never do : we never go to him 
in an emergency that demands risk and self-sacrifice, 
because we know that those things are not in his line. 
His character is the first thing, and. that is to be taken 
care of. When we want any thing of this kind done, 
we go to men who have no character, or, having one, 
are not uncomfortably conscious of it. 

Good and harmless as these people usually are, 
sources as they are of amusement to those who under- 
stand the secret springs of their life, fine as they are 
when regarded as specimens, they are, nevertheless, the 
victims of a mistake. Personal character with them 
has come to be the grand object of life — personal 
character as a thing of popular repute, when it should 
always be a resultant of true action, instituted for un- 
selfish purposes. The meanest and the most illegiti- 
mate of all human pursuits, is the direct pursuit of a 
reputation. It is supremely selfish and contemptible ; 
and there is no man who really deserves a good repu- 
tation who does not make its acquisition subordinate, 
as an aim, in all his actions. A man whose action with 
relation to the questions that come before him is regu* 
10 



218 Gold-Foil. 



lated by its preconceived effect upon his character 
with the public, is entirely untrustworthy, and will be 
trusted by the public no further than his interest is seen 
to coincide -with the wishes of the public. 

Character is a thing that will take care of itself; 
and all character that does not take care of itself is 
either very weak, or utterly fictitious. A man who 
does as nearly right as possible, according to the dic- 
tates of his judgment and his conscience, will achieve a 
character without giving a thought to it, so that all at- 
tention bestowed upon the direct acquisition of char- ■ 
acter before the public, is so much attention wasted and 
so much time thrown away. By their works are we to 
know men ; and we have no other standard by which 
to measure them. We tolerate a harmless, selfish man, 
but we do not trust him with our interests. The most 
of those whom we find supremely devoted to the 
preservation of their character, won their character 
honestly enough, originally. They struck out boldly 
at the beginning of life, did nobly, succeeded, won the 
praise of the people, and then, like men grown rich, 
became suddenly conservative and timid. Finding 
themselves in possession of a character, and realizing 
something of the preciousness of the possession, they 
immediately began to nurse it, and arrange all their ac- 
tion with relation to it. Then they ceased to grow, and 
retired essentially from business, 



The Prefervation of Character. 219 



Much better would it have been for all of this class 
had they had fewer friends and more enemies. In fact, 
there is a fault in the reputation of every man who has 
no enemies, for no man can be a positive power in the 
world, moving in right lines through evils, and abuses, 
and wrongs, without treading upon the toes of some- 
body. As this world is constituted, no man can be 
without enemies unless he- be without power, or unless 
he adapt himself to the evils and the evil men encoun- 
tered in his course. Consequently, no man has a repu- 
tation which is really significant and valuable that is 
not won in about equal measure from the blessings of 
one class and the curses of another. The praises of the 
good are no better testimonials of a sound and valuable 
character than the maledictions of the bad. In fact, 
reputation and character are widely different things, 
though they are so closely coupled in the minds of those 
whom we are discussing that they see no difference be- 
tween them. Character lives in a man ; reputation out- 
side of him. A man may have a good character and 
no reputation, or he may have a good reputation and 
no character; but with self worshippers they are near- 
ly identical. 

Of all the bondage in the world I know of none 
more senseless and useless than bondage to one's char- 
acter or reputation. The " fogyism " and "hunkerism " 
of politics, and the rigid conservatism of religious opin- 



220 Gold-Foil. 



ion, grow mainly out of this bondage. Consistency is 
clung to with almost an insane tenacity. It is more 
important in this bondage that a course of action should 
be consistent with a man's past life than with truth and 
justice. A man's past is elevated as the highest stand- 
ard of his present and his future. He pledges himself 
against progress by making his present character and 
his past course the law of his life. He clings to the in- 
stitutions, the opinions, the policy, and the sentiments 
in which he has cast his life ; and when these are gone, 
or are superseded, he clings to their names, and so 
" walks in vain show." If a party dies, it does not die 
to him ; because, if he were to admit the fact, or the 
idea, of its death, he would doubt his own infallibility. 
If an institution falls, he will not acknowledge it, for it 
will make a hole in a reputation w^hich he considers 
compacted and complete. No man who progresses 
can be consistent with himself. Maturity cannot be 
consistent with immaturity. All the consistency God 
requires of any man, or approves in any man, is consis- 
tency with the best light of the present. Let the dead 
bury its dead. It is only God himself who has even the 
right to be consistent with His past life. 

The worthy young men who read these words are 
dreaming of the attainment of a character which shall 
give them not only reputation — not only praise — but " 
weight in the world. If this be your prime object, 



The Prefervation of Character. 221 

young man, you are very likely to take the wrong 
course and make wreck of yourself. Let me tell you 
that if you do right, your character will take care of 
itself, no less than your reputation. Serve God and 
your generation well, leave the consideration of your 
character and yourself behind, seek to be consistent 
with the highest life you have, be not afraid to change 
your opinions or your course on any thing if you think 
you are wrong, and God and your generation will take 
care of you. As soon as it is seen that you are unself- 
ish, and that you are free to act rightly and justly with 
relation to whatever comes before you, a place in the 
world will be made for you, and work will be given 
you to do. Do not be disheartened if you make ene- 
mies, for if you are really a good power in the world, 
you will be sure to make them. I do not say that a 
man who has enemies is necessarily a good man, but I 
do say that no man can be a good power in the world 
without making them. 

There are a hundred things that I could mention 
more valuable than reputation. Self-respect is one of 
these ; a conscience void of offence is another ; the re 
formation and the progress of those around you are 
others ; and God's approval is another. Maintain your 
self-respect - 3 keep a spotless conscience ; and do good 
to all around you with supreme reference to Him in 
whom you live, and your character will grow health- 



222 Gold-Foil. 



fully, without a thought given to it. The moment the 
preservation of your character and reputation becomes 
the great object of your life, — the moment that you 
begin to arrange your life with reference to a character 
already achieved — that moment you will cease to grow, 
and pass to your place among the harmless fossils that 
occupy the ornamental niches of society. 

The influence of enemies upon a really sound char- 
acter is always healthful. A certain degree of recog- 
nition and praise does any man good ; but the usual 
effect of a great deal of it is debilitating. It spoils the 
child, and weakens the preacher, and enervates the 
orator. It injures the character of almost every man. 
Praise is very sweet, but the soul cannot thrive upon a 
diet of sugar any more than the body. A man who re- 
ceives a great deal of praise, and drinks it in with 
genuine appetite, soon comes to regard it with an un- 
healthy greed. He wants it from every body, wants 
it all the time, labors to get it, and is disappointed and 
uneasy if he does not get it. It is well for every man, 
therefore, to have enemies, to hear what they say about 
him, and to experience the weight of their opposition. 
Enemies drive the soul home to its motives, rouse its 
finest energies, compact its character, render it watch- 
ful of the issues of its life, keep it strained up to its 
work, and help to eliminate from it selfish considera- 
tions. There hardly ever lived a reformer who might 



The Prefervation of Character. 223 

not have been strangled and silenced at the outset of 
his career by praise. Thank God for the enmity that 
developed into giants the reformers of our own and of 
past times. May He in mercy forbid that any of the 
young and noble hearts now yearning for the good 
work of the world be spoiled by too much praise and 
too few enemies ! 

A character once worthily won is to be preserved 
in precisely the same way that it is won. A character 
is easily tarnished, and a good name easily lost ; but 
neither is to be jDreserved by making it the supreme 
object of attention. Here it becomes necessary to keep 
a broad distinction between reputation and character, 
for one may be destroyed by slander, while the other 
can never be harmed save by its possessor. The mal- 
ice of others may tarnish a good name — may load it 
with suspicions — may associate it with gross scandal- 
may blacken it even beyond the reach of total re- 
covery, but the character can receive no injury save by 
the voluntary act and choice of its owner. A man, in 
order to retain his reputation, may be required, not 
unfrequently, to compromise his character ; and in 
order to keep his character pure, may be' obliged to 
compromise his reputation. Character is as much more 
valuable than reputation, as it is more valuable than its 
own name. 

Reputation is in no man's keeping. You and I can- 



224 Gold-Foil. 



not determine what other men shall think of us and say 
about us. We can only determine what they ought 
to think of us and say about us : and we can only do 
this by acting squarely up to our convictions of duty, 
without the slightest reference to its effect upon our- 
selves. There are two ways in which men lose their 
character and their reputation with it. The selfish 
means instituted for the direct purpose of preserving 
character and reputation are damaging to any man. 
How many statesmen and politicians have " fixed them- 
selves up " with a character which every one sees is in- 
tended for a market, and how few of all the number 
ever arrive at the goal of their ambition ! Many of 
them become the laughing-stock of the country; and 
when the great conventions meet, their names are 
passed by, and new ones elevated, of those who have 
been employed in minding their business, and letting 
their character and reputation take care of themselves. 
One great reason why so few of the truly great men of 
the nation have failed to be placed in the presidential 
office is that they spoiled their reputation in the selfish 
desire to preserve it for the purpose of winning office. 

Another way of losing character and reputation is 
by yielding to some sudden temptation to sin, or by 
the secret entertainment of a vice that with certainty 
undermines both. A single deed of shame, ah ! how it 
blackens beyond all cleansing the character that has 



The Prefer vation of Character. 225 

been builded in the struggles and toils of half a cen- 
tury ! There is no wealth under the sun so jDrecious as 
a good name worthily won, and there is no calamity so 
great as such a name shamefully lost. Far be it from 
me to depreciate the value of character, or to depreci- 
ate pride in its maintenance. While it should be the 
natural, unsought consequent of a life controlled by the 
purest and noblest motives, it doubtless may be enter- 
tained as a choice possession, always subordinate as a 
motive of action to Christian principle and duty. 




10* 



XX. 

VICES OF IMAGINATION. 

" It is dangerous playing with edged tools/' 

" He who avoids the temptation avoids the sin." 

" Keep yourself from opportunities, and God will keep you from sins " 

" The pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken at last." 

THERE is an enchanted middle ground between 
virtue and vice, where many a soul lives and 
feeds in secret, and takes its payment for the restraint 
and mortification of its outward life. I once knew an 
old dog whose most exalted and delighted life was 
lived upon this charmed territory. The only brute 
tenants of the dwelling where he lived were himself 
and a cat. Rover bore no ill-will toward his feline 
companion — in fact, he was too good-natured to bear 
ill-will toward any thing. He had been detected once 
or twice in worrying her, and one or two severe flog- 
gings had taught him that the sport would not be 



Vices of Imagination. 22? 



tolerated. Still he did not stop thinking about it ; and 
at every convenient opportunity he planted himself in 
her way, watched her as she lurked for prey, scared 
her by growls and feints, and kept her in a fever of ap 
prehension and fretfulness. Xow, while I do not be 
lieve that he intended her the slightest mischief, I have 
no doubt that, in his bloody imagination, he had slain 
her a thousand times, chased her all over the neighbor- 
hood, and torn her limb from lirnb. In short, while he 
knew that he must not worry her, he took the satisfac- 
tion that lay next to it — that of being tempted to worry 
her, and found in the excitements of this temptation 
the highest rewards of his self-denial. 

Humanity has plenty of Rovers of this same sort — 
men and women who lead faultless outward lives, who 
have no intention to sin, who yield their judgment — if 
not their conscience — to the motives of self-restraint 
but who, in secret, resort to the fields of temptation, 
and seek among its excitements for the flavor, at least, 
of the sins which they have discarded. This realm of 
temptation is, to a multitude of minds, one of the most 
seductive in which their feet ever wander. Thither 
they resort to meet and commune with the images, 
beautiful but impure, of the forbidden things that lie 
beyond. In fact, I have sometimes thought there were 
men and women who were really more in love with 
temptation than with sin — who, by genuine experience, 



228 Gold-Foil. 



had learned that feasts of the imagination were sweeter 
than feasts of sense. "Whether this be the case or not. 
I have no doubt that the love of temptation, for the ex- 
citement which it brings, is very general, even with 
those whom w^e esteem as patterns of virtue. The sur- 
render of the soul to these excitements is the more 
dangerous from the fact that, by some sort of sensual 
sophistry, they are conceived to be harmless, and with- 
out the pale of actual sin. There is no intention to sin 
in it, but only an attempt to filch from sin all the pleas- 
tire that can be procured without its penalty. 

Playing with the temptation to sin is doubtless ac- 
companied with less apparent disaster than the actual 
commission of it, and, so far, is a smaller evil ; but it is 
an evil, and, essentially, a sin. The man w T ho loves 
and seeks the excitement of temptation, shows that he 
is restrained from sin by fear, and not by principle — 
that, while his life is on the side of virtue, his affections 
lean to vice. This is a sham life, and a mean life. 
There are multitudes to whom temptation comes from 
the forbidden world of sin, but it comes unbidden and 
unwelcome — on the lines of old appetites and old pas- 
sions not yet thoroughly under control — and it is 
fought against and driven out. It is the voluntary 
going out of the soul after temptation, as a kind of 
unforbidden good, that I challenge and question. It 
is the willing, secret sin of imagination that I denounce, 



Vices of Imagination. 229 



as not only a sin essentially, in itself bnt as the path 
over which every soul naturally travels to the overt act 
of transgression which lies beyond. It is a kind of sin 
that injures none but the sinner, directly ; but fouler, 
more rotten-hearted men I have never met than the 
cowardly hypocrites whose lives are "spent in dallying 
with the thought of sins which they dare not commit. 

We often wonder that certain men and women are 
left by God to the commission of sins which shock us. 
We wonder how, under the temptation of a single 
hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of 
honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are 
no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These 
men and women are those who have dallied with temp- 
tation — have exposed themselves to the influence of it, 
and have been weakened and corrupted by it. If we 
could get at the secret histories of those who stand 
suddenly discovered as vicious, we should find that 
they had been through this most polluting preparatory 
process — that they had been in the habit of going out 
and meeting temptation in order that they might enjoy 
its excitements — that underneath a blameless outward 
life they have welcomed and entertained sin in their 
imaginations, until their moral sense was blunted, and 
they were ready for the deed of which they thought 
they were incapable. S 

I very earnestly and gratefully believe in the exer- 



230 Gold-Foil. 



cise of a divinely restraining influence upon the minds 
of those who are tempted, but I believe there is a point 
beyond which it rarely goes. I do not believe that 
God will interpose to prevent a man from sinning who 
either seeks, or willingly encounters, the temptation 
and the opportunity to sin. When a man finds charm 
m opportunity, and delight in temptation, he has al- 
ready committed in heart the sin which he shrinks 
from embodying in action ; and God rarely stands be 
tween him and further guilt. We are to keep our- 
selves from opportunities, and God will keep us from 
sin. It is all that can be expected of a being of infinite 
purity that he shall guard us from the power of temp- 
tation that comes to us. He must be a hard and ir- 
reverent, or a very ignorant and deluded man, who 
can pray to be delivered from the overcoming power 
of a temptation into whose atmosphere he willingly 
enters. In fact, we are taught to pray, not that we 
may be delivered from the power of temptation, but 
that we may not be led into it. 

It may be said with measurable truthfulness that 
half the art of Christian living consists in shunning 
temptation. A man who has lived to middle life has 
observed and studied himself to little purpose if he 
have not learned the weak points of his own character, 
and the kind of temptations that assail him with the 
uiost power ; and it is doubtless true that any man who 



Vices of Imagination. 231 

really loves a pure and good life will avoid a tempta- 
tion as he would the sin to which it would lead him. 
I can have but little charity for those who apologize 
for their frequent falls from virtue by charging the 
blame upon the power of temptation, because tempta- 
tion and opportunity come to them unsought no oftener 
than to others. It is the man who loves vice, and de- 
lights in temptation, who is subject to their power. I 
have no faith in the reformation of a drunkard who 
carelessly passes his accustomed tippling-shop, and 
carelessly looks in. 

We are to avoid temptation because it is only as 
vice is glorified, and its charms exalted by the power 
of imagination, that it appears charming and attractive 
to us. A vision of naked vice, of whatsoever sort, is a 
vision of deformity. There are thousands among those 
who delight in the excitements of temptation, volun- 
tarily sought, who would shrink with horror and dis- 
gust from a sudden introduction to the presence of a 
vice toward which they have been attracted from a 
distance, There is no beauty in beastliness, save that 
which an excited imagination lends to it. It is by no 
inherent charm that it draws men and women toward 
it. It is as low and loathsome as the serpent around 
whose evil eyes the poor bird flutters, until it drops, a 
victim to the fangs that await its certain coming. 

I have said thus much generally o f the sins of the 



232 Gold-Foil. 

imagination, aware that my remarks apply m&inly to 
one variety of temptations — the most dangerous and 
the most seductive of all. There is nothing charming 
in the thought of murder, in the contemplation of a 
great revenge, in theft, and in the majority of crimes. 
Imagination has no sophistry by which such crimes 
may be justified, and no power to wrap them in an 
atmosphere of beauty. The sins of the imagination are 
mainly those which contemplate the illicit indulgence 
of natural and normal passions and appetites, the temp- 
tations to which come in upon the lines of legitimate 
and heaven-ordained sympathies. It is among the 
meshes of that which is legitimate and that which is 
illegitimate — that which is forbidden and that which is 
unforbidden — that the moral sense becomes involved 
and moral purity is compromised. It is because men 
and women are led out into the field of temptation by 
some of the sweetest and strongest sympathies of their 
natures that they feel no alarm and apprehend no 
danger. It is because they entertain no design to sin 
that they linger there without fear. Oh ! if this im- 
ginary world of sin could be unveiled — this world into 
which the multitude go unknown and unsuspected — to 
dream of delights unhallowed by relations that may 
only give them license — how would it be red with the 
blush of shame ! 

This world of sense, built by the imagination — how 



Vices of Imagination. 233 

fair and foul it is ! Like a fairy island in the sea of 
life, it smiles m sunlight and sleej)s in green, knowu of 
the world not by communion of knowledge, but by 
personal, secret discovery ! The waves of every ocean 
kiss its feet. The airs of every clime play among its 
trees, and tire with the voluptuous music which they 
bear. Flowers bend idly to the fall of fountains, and 
beautiful forms are wreathing their white arms, and 
calling for companionship. Out toward this charmed 
island, by day and by night, a million shallops push un- 
seen of each other, and of the world of real life left be- 
hind, for revelry and reward ! The single sailors never 
meet each other ; they tread the same paths unknown 
of each other ; they come back, and no one knows, and 
no one asks where thev have been. Again and again 
is the visit repeated, with no absolutely vicious inten- 
tion, yet not without gathering the taint of vice. If 
God's light could shine upon this crowded sea, and 
discover the secrets of the island which it invests, what 
shameful retreats and encounters should we witness — 
fathers, mothers, maidens, men — children even, whom 
we had deemed as pure as snow — fly m g with guilty 
eyes and white lips to hide themselves from a great 
disgrace ! 

There is vice enough in the world of actual life, and 
it is there that we look for it ; but there is more in that 
other world of imagination that we do not see — vice 



234 Gold-Foil. 



that poisons, vice that kills, vice that makes whited 
sepulchres of temples that are deemed pure, even by 
multitudes of their tenants. Let none esteem them- 
selves blameless or pure who willingly and gladly seek 
in this world of imagination for excitements ! That 
remarkable poem of Margaret Fuller, which ascribes 
an indelible taint to the maiden w r ho only dreams of 
her lover an unmaidenly dream, has a fearful but en- 
tirely legitimate significance. It is a forbidden realm, 
where pure feet never wander ; and all w T ho would re- 
main pure must forever avoid it. It is the haunt of 
devils and damned spirits. Its foul air poisons man- 
hood and shrivels womanhood, even if it never be left 
behind in an advance to the overt sin which lies be- 
yond it. 

The pitcher that goes often to the w^ell gets broken 
at last. I presume that there is not one licentious man 
or ruined woman in one hundred whose way to perdi- 
tion did not lie directly through this forbidden field of 
imagination. Into that field they w^ent, and went 
again, till, weakened by the poisonous atmosphere, and 
grown morbid in their love of sin, and developed in all 
their tendencies to sensuality, and familiarized with the 
thought of vice, they fell, with neither the disposition 
nor the power to rise again. It is in this field that 
Satan wins all his victories. It is here that he is trans- 
formed into an angel of light. It is on this debatable 



Vices of Imagination. 235 

ground, half-way between vice and virtue, whither the 
silly multitude resort for dreams of that which they 
may not enjoy, that the question of personal perdition 
is settled. A pure soul sternly standing on the ground 
of virtue, or a pure soul standing immediately in the 
presence of vice, not once in ten thousand instances 
bends from its rectitude. It is only when it willingly 
becomes a w r anderer among the wiles of temptation, 
and an entertainer of the images it finds there, that 
it becomes subject to the power that procures its ruin. 
To the young, especially, is the exposition of this 
subject necessary — to those whose imaginations are ac- 
tive, whose passions are fresh and strong, and whose 
inexperience leaves them ignorant of consequences. 
There is no field of danger less talked of than this. 
Through many years of attendance upon the public 
ministrations of Christianity, I have never but twice 
heard this subject pointedly and faithfully alluded to. 
Books are mainly silent upon it. Fathers and mothers, 
faithful in all things else, shrink from the administra- 
tion of counsels upon matters which they would fain be- 
lieve are all unknown to the precious ones they have 
nurtured. Thus is it in schools, and thus is it every- 
where, where counsel is needed, and where it is de- 
manded. An impure word, a doubtful jest, a tale of 
sin, drunk in by these fresh souls, excites the imagina- 
tion, and straightway they discover the field of contem- 



236 Gold-Foil. 



plation, so full of danger and of death, and learn all its 
paths before they know any thing of the perils to which 
they subject themselves. Let me say to these, what 
they hear so little from other lips and pens, that when- 
ever they find themselves attracted to it, they can 
never abide in it, or enter upon it, without taint and 
without sin. Sooner or later in their life will they find 
that from all willing dalliance with temptation, and un- 
resisted entertainment of unworthy and impure imag- 
inations, their character has suffered an injury which 
untold ages will fail to remedy. 





XXI 



QUESTIONS ABOVE REASON. 

44 Anoint a villain, and he will prick you ; prick a villain, and he will anoint 
you.'* 

" Give a rogue an inch, and he will take an eli." 
" He who lies down with dogs, gets up with fleas."' 



GOOD men never make any thing by treating vil- 
lains as equals. A conscious villain who is 
treated as an equal by an honest man who is conscious 
of his villany, recognizes the man at once as a coward, 
and treats him accordingly. Treated as an inferior, a 
bad man becomes polite at once, or plays defiantly the 
bully and the blackguard that he is. "We may go the 
world over without finding any man who, in his own 
soul, knows his place so well as a very bad man ; and 
there is no way of securing his respect so easily as by 
giving him to understand that he is understood, and 
appreciated at his true value. Bow to him, and treat 



238 Gold-Foil. 



him like a gentleman, and he flounders and swaggers 
in the respectability conferred upon him. Shun him, 
or show him in any way that he is known and despised, 
and he becomes respectful and decent, nine times m 
ten. There is no social or Christian relation in which 
good and bad men are equals, and any good man who, 
for any cowardly reason, is willing to ignore the dis- 
tinction, commits a crime against society and against 
Christianity, and secures to himself the contempt of 
those to whom he defers. Anoint a villain, and he will 
prick you ; prick a villain, and he will anoint you. 

I know of no whip so effectual in its power when 
held over the back of an unprincipled man as social 
proscription. The worst men, save in exceptional cases 
of brutal self-abandonment, have a longing for respecta- 
bility. It is a hard thing for any man to walk through 
the streets, and meet among respectable men nought 
but stony faces, and to know that those faces are set 
simply against his sins. It is a hard thing for the worst 
men to feel that all good hearts and all decent hearths 
are shut against them, because their entrance would be 
regarded as a contamination. So these men strive to 
cheat us into respecting them by the assumption of 
false names, or endeavor to purchase respect and posi- 
tion by exhibitions of public spirit. The professional 
gambler, who is simply a leech upon the social body — ■ 
who gets his living without earning it, and wins the 



Oueftions above Reaibn. 239 



wealth of others by games of chance — the most heart- 
less, ruthless and mischievous of men — calls himself a 
sporting man, and loves to be called a sporting man. 
He would be much obliged to society if it would never 
mention the word " gambler " in connection with his 
name. In fact, he would be willing to sacrifice a little 
something for the public good, if by so doing he could 
keep his chin above water. 

Again, give a rogue an inch, and he will take an 
ell. Any favor shown to such men as these is an essen- 
tial license for further sin. They want countenance, 
and they seek it in many ways. If they can create a 
party for themselves, or manage to secure among men 
nominally respectable apologists and defenders, they 
are delighted, and feel themselves safer in their schemes 
and operations. We have only to recognize them as 
equals to lengthen the rope that holds them to decency. 
The moment I recognize a well knowm scoundrel as an 
equal, that moment I descend to his standard of moral- 
ity or immorality, assist to lower the general standard 
of respectability, and furnish to him a new point of de- 
parture from which he may plunge into further scoun- 
drelism. The fact is that no man who preys upon 
society for a livelihood, or habitually engages in prac- 
tices which compromise social purity and good order, 
can, by possibility, be a gentleman ; and no gentleman 
can deal with such a man on an equality, or eat of 



240 



Gold-Foil 



his dainties, or accept of his company or his favors, 
without compromising his position as a gentleman. 

He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas. 
When a decent man lowers his standard of respecta- 
bility so far that he can consort with a foe to society 
and morality, he damages himself beyond cure, in most 
instances. Confounding moral distinctions and com- 
promising with sin are dangerous operations. In the 
measure by which a decent man confers respectability 
upon a rascal, does the rascal transfer reproach to him. 
The act is one which changes both parties for the 
worse. A respectable man who comes to look with a 
degree of complacency upon one who has no title to 
respectability, is morally damaged. He becomes a 
weaker man, more open to temptation, and more liable 
to fall. The princely gamblers of New York and 
"Washington understand this principle thoroughly, and 
initiate all their victims by bringing them into com- 
munion with rascality over their costly viands and 
their abundant wines and cigars. There is no com- 
mon ground of communion between the two classes. 
There is not even debatable ground. The distinction 
is heaven-wide on its very face. 

I have stated these facts, first, because they are 
true, and should be made useful ; and, second, because 
they introduce me to, and assist to illustrate, a principle 
not sufficiently recognized in the contacts and contests 



Oueftions above Reaibn. 241 

of truth with falsehood in the moral and religious 
world. It will be remembered — for the occurrence 
was a recent one — that a champion of slavery and an 
opponent of slavery met in an American city as dis- 
putants or wranglers upon this question. If slavery 
were only a political question, a discussion like this 
might be legitimate, though it might not be very use- 
ful. But it is recognized everywhere as not only a 
political, but a moral question. I enter upon no dis- 
cussion of this question, because it is not relevant to 
my present purpose, but I say that to the ojDponent of 
slavery the right of every man to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness, is a self-evident truth — a truth 
which calls not for argument but statement — a funda- 
mental truth, which lies at the very basis of all free- 
dom and 'all sound institutions. Xow, the moment a 
man holding such a view as this meets a champion of 
slavery on even ground, to argue the question, he 
yields the battle, and is worsted before he opens his 
mouth. By consenting that the question admits of 
argument, for a moment, he yields ground which is 
impregnable, places himself on a common footing with 
his antagonist, and damages himself and his cause. I 
have seen Christian men enter into arguments with 
avowed infidels in bar-rooms and vicious assemblages, 
as a matter of duty; and such sights have always 
oppresssed me with a sense of humiliation. Infidelity 
11 



242 Gold-Foil. 



is not the equal of faith in any sense. Light has no 
fellowship with darkness, and Christ no concord with 
Belial. Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of 
good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its 
rights and claims there. The moment that it does this, 
it is shorn of its power. A man in whom Christianity 
has become a life, knows that Christianity is a verity — 
knows that no argument under heaven can convince 
him of its falsehood. He knows that the highest claims 
of Christianity are not based in argument. He knows 
that he w r as not intellectually argued into religion, that 
he is not kept in it by force of argument or logic, and 
that the highest demonstration of the truth of Christian- 
ity which he possesses — his own individual experience 
— is precisely that which he cannot bring forward in any 
dispute with an infidel. The moment, therefore, that 
he comes down from the position of positive knowledge, 
and admits that there is room for argument, he sur- 
renders the citadel, and the conflict is to be decided 
simply by personal prowess. The truth of Christianity 
admitted between two opponents, there is, of course, a 
legitimate theatre of discussion opened for questions 
connected with it ; but until that be admitted, there 
can be no discussion that does not compromise the po- 
sition and the power of him who enters as the cham. 
pi on of Christianity. 

I say that infidelity is not the equal of faith, be- 



Oueitions above Reafon. 243 

cause, while infidelity abides in, and relies upon, pure 
reason, faith, with reason abundantly satisfied, relies 
upon the demonstrations of an experience which infi- 
delity will reject as a matter of course. I say that 
faith and infidelity can never meet on common ground 
to argue the truth or falsehood of Christianity, because 
faith, as its first step, must surrender its stronghold, 
and yield the question to the arbitration of reason, by 
which it can never be settled. I say, further, that no 
Christian man has a right to do this, and that he can- 
not do it without weakening himself, and damaging his 
cause. I may be willing, and should be willing, to give 
my reasons for my belief in Christianity, but I should 
not be willing to surrender a question to the judgment 
of reason which I know and feel to be mainly out of 
its realm. There is nothing that infidelity more thor- 
oughly delights in than argument, because, in argu- 
ment, it brings faith down to its own level, and takes it 
at a disadvantage. It is lifted into importance and re- 
spectability by the consent of faith to meet it on com- 
mon ground — ground where none but weak minds will 
ever meet it — minds that will be mastered in a battle 
of reason almost as a matter of course. 

Many of the best things received into the belief and 
faith of the best men — things relating to the heart of 
the individual and the life of society — demand that 
they shall never be submitted to the combats and con 



244 Gold-Foil. 



elusions of reason on a common ground with error. A 
gentleman will not fight a duel with a churl, simply be ? 
cause the churl is not his equal. He could gain no vic- 
tory that would compensate for the social disgrace in- 
volved in meeting an inferior on a footing of equality. 
Men of the world, who will scout my reasoning upon 
the management of a certain class of moral questions, 
will understand this illustration, and find it somewhat 
difficult, I imagine, to get away from it. It is recog- 
nized as a rule of law r , based on a fundamental principle 
of justice, that a man shall be tried by his peers — a 
body of men capable of appreciating all the circum- 
stances and evidence of his case, and dispossessed of 
those prejudices of class and condition which would 
have a tendency to mislead them. The same principle 
demands that all those questions, which relate to things 
above the realm of pure reason, shall be judged by those 
who are capable of aj)preciating, and willing to accept, 
the evidence that lies in that realm. As there is no 
confession of cowardice on the part of a gentleman who 
refuses to fight a churl, and no self-conviction of guilt 
in him who declines to be tried by other than 
his peers, so there is no admission of weakness on 
the part of him who refuses to place his faith on 
the footing of ' another man's infidelity, and to sub- 
mit the questions touching his highest life, to the 
judgment of those who are incapable of understand- 



Queftions above Reafon. 245 

Lug, and unwilling to admit, the evidence relating to 
them. 

The power of Christianity before the world, as a 
system of religion, no less than the power of all those 
objects and subjects of faith and belief which he above 
the domain of pure reason, abides in assertion — bold, 
broad, direct, confident, and persistent assertion. If a 
man were to deny that the rose is beautiful, and chal- 
lenge me to the proof of its beauty, what more could 
I do than to hold the rose before his eyes, and say that 
it is beautiful ? If the rose could speak, would it thank 
me for admitting that its beauty is a matter of argu- 
ment ? The settlement of the question of its beauty 
is utterly beyond the power of reason. I know it 
is beautiful ; I feel that it is beautiful ; its beauty 
thrills me with the most delicious pleasure. That is 
enough for me : but that would not be enough for him 
w T ho denies its beauty. I arrive at a knowledge of its 
beauty by no process of reasoning, and I can maintain 
the fact of its beauty by no power of argument, because 
the determination of its quality and character is without 
the realm of reason. 

In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by 
well-meaning; and zealous men, through treating error 
and infidelity with altogether too much respect. I be- 
lieve that it is safe to say that Christianity is indebted 
for none of its progress in the world to rational conflicts 



246 Gold-Foil. 



with infidelity. I do not believe that a single great 
wrong has ever been overthrown by meeting the advo- 
cates of wrong in argument. Assertion of truths known 
and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of 
truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral 
conviction — this is the New Testament method, and the 
true one. If a man say to me that he does not believe 
in the existence of a God, my judgment tells me at 
once that, if he is sincere, he is insane or a fool, and 
that if he is insincere, he is a liar. Shall I sit down to 
argue the question with him after this ? Shall I admit 
that his atheism is as good as my belief? No. 
If he make his assertion, let him be content with 
that. If he ask of me the reason of my belief, I will 
give it him, but I will not admit that to be a sub- 
ject of argument which is the first fact in the men- 
tal and moral universe. By so doing I should com- 
mit an absurdity that would stultify me, and inflict a 
dishonor on the Being of whom I make myself the 
champion. 

If I. have made myself understood on this point, I 
have dwelt upon it long enough, and have only to add, 
that he who allows himself to be placed in a false posi- 
tion by consenting to stand on the platform of reason, 
with relation to questions beyond the domain of reason, 
will find himself damaged in the end. If he lie down 
with dogs, he will get up with fleas. A man who con- 



Oueftions above Reafon. 247 

Bents to the purely rational decision of a question which 
reason can never settle, will find himself open to the in- 
vasions of error — weakened in all his defences. For- 
saking an impregnable position, he enters a field 
full of doubts and dangers; and if he consent to 
remain there, he will become a subject of their 
attack at every point. More men have been ar- 
gued, in a measure, or entirely, out of faith, than 
have ever been argued into it — not because their 
faith was irrational, but because they have prostituted 
that to the basis of reason which is beyond the realm 
of reason. 

Assertion, proclamation, exhibition, illustration — 
these are the instruments of the progress of all truth 
relating to the highest life of the world. The Gospel 
is promulgated by preaching, not by wrangling. The 
reformation of the sixteenth century was effected by 
the assertion of a few simple truths, and the denuncia- 
tion of errors and abuses. The idea of Luther consent- 
ing to meet Tetzel before a public audience, to argue 
the question of the legitimacy and morality of peddling 
indulgences to sin, is simply ridiculous. That thing was 
not to be soberly argued, but soundly denounced. Xo 
truth held to be self-evident, and no truth whose demon- 
stration lies in personal experience — and therefore above 
reason — can ever be submitted to argument without 
prostitution • or without danger. Reason dethroned 



248 



Gold-Foil. 



truth in France, but truth resumed its seat, in spite of 
reason, by simple self-assertion. All truth that lives 
independent of reason asks no favors of it, and takes 
no law of it. 




XXII. 

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE. 

44 Many a cow stands in the meadow, and. looks wistfully at the common.' 

" Grass grows not upon the highway. 11 

" Life at court is often a short cut to hell. 11 



THERE is no human estate or condition around 
which gathers so much that is fallacious in glory 
and fictitious in attraction as around that which is de- 
nominated " public life." To be exalted in public 
office, to be observed of a state or a nation, to be 
sought out and honored of public assemblages, to be 
known and recognized by the public press — this seems 
to a great multitude, whose fortunes are cast in private 
life, to be the most desirable, the most enviable thing, 
in all the world. If we could read the secret of nine 
hearts in ten that we meet, we should find that under 
their seeming content with private life and apparent 
satisfaction with private pursuits, there is a longing for 
11* 



250 Gold-Foil. 



a position that will give their persons, powers and 
names a public recognition. The greed for office, 
which is evident on every hand, and among all classes 
of people, is but a demonstration of this universal ap- 
petite. It is not confined to a sex, but manifests itself 
among women as well as among men. We hear much 
of " Avoman's rights," from the lips of women who have 
a taste for public life, or a desire for public recognition, 
and they make their proselytes among those who are 
exercised by a similar ambition. 

It is a very sad thing to me— -this discontent with 
private life — because the larger part of it has no noble 
element in it. The majority of men and women who 
are ambitious of public life do not wish for it for the 
sake of doing more good, nor because they believe 
themselves to be transcendently adapted to the per- 
formance of public duties. They are not willing to 
work and Avait, in their private spheres of action, until 
they demonstrate their ability and fitness for public 
position, and are sought for by the public as those 
Avorthy of trust and honor. No, they desire place for 
the sake of place ; they seek for public life simply from 
a greed for notoriety or fame. They desire to be 
knoAvn, to be looked at, to be talked about, to be 
lionized. It is publicity that has charms for them— not 
public duty, nor public responsibility. All this is ut- 
terly selfish — utterly contemptible. It is unAvorthy of 



Public and Private Life. 251 



sound manhood and true womanhood, and its tendency 
is directly demoralizing. When we remember that the 
public offices of the country are filled mainly by those 
who have attained them by direct seeking, spurred on 
by this base ambition, it will not be hard to account for 
the low morals that are to be found in public life. 

We can 0*0 farther than this. It may truthfully be 
said that a man yrhose chief ambition is publicity of 
name and position, demonstrates, by its possession and 
exercise, his unfitness for that to which he aspires. If 
in this great world of discontented priyate life there 
are men or women who read these words, let them 
consider that in the degree in which their ambition to 
be known is the predominant motiye within them, do 
they demonstrate their unfitness for the honors which 
they seek. The ambition is essentially a selfish and a 
mean one, and proyes directly, and unmistakably, the 
possession of a nature unworthy of great public respon- 
sibilities. A surpassing, oyerweening desire for public 
life, for the sake of public life, and the kind of honor 
which it brings, demonstrates a nature that will sub- 
ordinate public to priyate good, and eleyate personal 
reputation aboye the requirements of public duty. The 
cowardice of politicians, and the shameful deyotion to 
priyate interests that preyails in legislatiye bodies, only 
show how many haye found place through this selfish 
seeking of it. 



252 Gold-Foil. 



But all public life, or all notoriety, is not to be 
found in politics. Literature, journalism, the pulpit, 
the bar — all these are aspired to as objects that are 
calculated, more or less, to satisfy the appetite for pub- 
lic notoriety. The consequence is that literature is 
crowded with weak or vicious pretenders, journalism 
with greedy self-seekers, the pulpit with men who 
have no qualifications for their calling, and the bar 
with brawling pettifoggers. The question with great 
numbers who embrace these professions is not — " What 
have I within me, for the world, that I may convey 
through the profession which I choose to the world ? " 
but — " What has the world for me, that it can convey 
through this profession to me ? " There is a proper 
kind of self-seeking, but it is that which has its basis in 
worthy doing. A man who gladly grasps an honor 
which he has not earned, because it is an honor, is a 
man unworthy of trust and without shame. 

But is there any thing, after all, in this public life 
that is so very desirable ? Is there any thing so very 
sweet in having one's name public property ? Is there 
any thing in the burden of public responsibilities and 
cares that is so exceedingly pleasant to bear ? I am 
willing that any man who bears worthily the burden 
of public life shall answer these questions. Any man 
who takes upon his shoulders, and faithfully and con- 
scientiously carries, the responsibilities of a public po- 



Public and Private Life 253 

sition, knows and feels that he is a slave, and that the 
careless hind who whistles behind his plough has a 
peace of mind which has left him forever. 

It matters not what kind of publicity or notoriety 
any man, worthy or unworthy, may have, he will be 
the object of the meanest envy and the most inveterate 
enmity. A name that has become public property is a 
name to be bandied about, coupled with foul epithets, 
criticised, contemned, or to be made the subject of ex- 
travagant laudation — more humiliating, if less madden- 
ing. The alternative of a public life of mingled jDraise 
and abuse, or of unmeasured abuse, is that of a public 
idol — is a public life that shall be the object of univer- 
sal flattery. There are some men who can withstand 
the influences of such a position as this, but they are 
few , and far between. A public life is always a life of 
great temptation ; and few lead it w r ho do not feel, in 
the depths of their souls, that they have been damaged 
by it. A host of evil influences cluster about it. It 
interferes with domestic peace, absorbs the mind, and 
blunts the affections. It depresses the tone of the 
moral feelings, and hinders the development of piety 
in Christian souls. When entered upon, it is found to 
be full of intrigues, petty jealousies, and selfish conten- 
tions ; while its rew r ards are the most hollow and illu- 
sory that can be imagined. 

I will not deny that to be loved and recognized by 



254 Gold-Foil. 



the public for a character worthily won, and for ser- 
vices faithfully and unselfishly rendered, is a boon to 
be gratefully received and genially cherished. An am- 
bition to be worthy of public honor and popular recog- 
nition is a legitimate motive of a noble mind. That 
there are sweet rewards in such a recognition as this, 
is not to be denied ; but a notoriety, sought for its own 
sake, and attained for purely selfish ends — a public life 
entered upon for the rewards of fame — is one of the 
basest things and most miserable cheats in the world. 
Estimated legitimately, all public life is a private bur- 
den, to be assumed as a matter of duty, and borne un- 
selfishly. Such public life as this deserves honor, as 
one of its incidental rewards, but there is not a worthy 
mind in the world that occupies a prominent position 
before the public that does not turn, and return, to the 
little circle of home and its affections — to the grateful 
sphere of its private life — for that which is sweetest 
and best in the material of its earthly happiness. 

Grass grows not upon the highway, but by the 
highway side — in humble pasture-lands, in quiet mead- 
ows, and in well-fenced homesteads. Where horses 
tramp, and wheels roll, and cattle treaA, and swine are 
driven in hungry droves, every thing is foul with dust 
and offal. It is only on the other side of the fence that 
the clover blooms, and the daisy nods, and the grass 
spreads itself, undisturbed, into velvet lawns. It is not 



Public and Private Life. 255 

. K , 

where unclean beasts rove freely, and browse at will, 
that the maize perfects its golden product and the 
bending tree its fruit, but in secluded fields, where the 
husbandman works and watches unseen. No more is 
it in public life that the best affections of our natures 
blossom, and the little virtues spring and spread to 
give to life the freshness of velvet verdure. Xo more 
is it in public life that a golden character is perfected, 
and fruit is matured and borne unto eternal life. It is 
only in private life that the highest development, the 
purest tastes, the sweetest happiness, and the finest 
consummations and successes of life are found. To 
these conclusions reason guides us, and experience 
holds us. 

I have alluded to the desire of women for public 
life, and in this connection, the subject naturally arises 
again. "With women who desire a public career, the 
question is one of rights and privileges, as if public life 
were the grand estate of humanity. TVith me, it is not 
a question of rights at all, though, if I were to make it 
such, I should not find myself greatly at variance with 
those who maintain the rights of women most stoutly. 
Abstractly, a woman has a right to be, and to do, 
what she pleases, but the question is not one of right 
and privilege. It. is a question of duty. I believe that 
it is the right and privilege of woman to remain in 
private life, if she choose so to remain. It is not the 



256 Gold-Foil. 



right of man to shirk public responsibility, if it be laid 
upon him. Man's physical structure and intellectual 
constitution — his power to labor and endure — his free- 
dom from the sexual disabilities incident to woman — 
designate him as the world's worker. While private 
life is his best sphere and his happiest lot, he may not 
slip his neck from the yoke of public responsibility. If 
women were needed in public life, they would be in the 
same condition — they would have no right to decline 
public duty ; but, in the present constitution of society, 
they are not needed. Duty, therefore, does not call 
them into public life, and they have the right and the 
privilege to remain away from public affairs — a privi- 
lege w T hich, if properly estimated by them, would prove 
to them that, for whatever God has denied to them, and 
for whatever of hardship He has laid upon them, He 
has made abundant compensations. 

It is strange that, in matters like this, men and wo- 
men will not receive the testimony of competent expe- 
rience. There is no w T orthy public man living who will 
not testify to the surpassing excellence and charm of 
private life. The higher a man is raised in public life, 
the more is he removed from that sympathy with the 
popular heart which flows from common pursuits and a 
common condition. The frigid isolation of power, the 
vexations of popular misconstruction, the jealousy and 
envy of mean minds, the clash of public duty witfc 



Public and Private Life. 257 



private friendship — all these are hard to bear, and there 
is no sensitive and worthy nature that will not shrink 
from them. The very best of those whom the world 
has delighted to honor, turn from the dreary loneliness 
of their sphere to the simple joys of the private life 
they have left — to its honest, neighborly friendships, its 
pure habits, its quiet flow of family life, its freedom 
from care, and its pleasures, with a yearning memory, 
and sometimes — nay, often — with a memory which 
does not fail to lament the loss of a sensibility that 
ought to be touched to tears. 

I am inclined to think that much of this vicious 
longing for public life and notoriety arises from a vice 
in the character of the private life in which it is born. 
I am convinced that much of it would be obviated if 
private life were all that it should be. Man is a social 
being, and, in his love of approbation, seeks for the 
recognition of society. , If private life moved in large 
circles, he would get this recognition, and be content 
with it ; but it is a fact, that private life is too much with- 
out congenial relationships. It is essentially selfish, and 
helps to cherish rather than to destroy the appetite for 
public life. In looking over the world of public life, 
and the world of those who are seeking it for its own 
sake, I think it will be found that a large majority of 
its men and women are those whose private life is 
meagre in its rewards, or positively unhappy. I be- 



258 Gold-Foil. 



lieve that the majority of notoriety-hunters are men 
and women with uncongenial companions, or with no 
companions at all, or witli an insufficient circle of 
friends, or with a circle of insufficient friends. If 
private life were entirely what it should be, this disease 
would doubtless be greatly abated. 

I suppose that no one can read the Evangelists with- 
out being impressed with the evident shrinking of the 
Master from publicity. The performance of many a nota- 
ble miracle was followed by the command that it should 
not be published. " See that thou tell no man," w r as His 
modest mandate. He preached in the synagogues, on the 
mountains, and by the water-side, but it was because He 
had a work to do — a mission to perform. His severest 
words were for those who prayed at the corners of the 
streets, and gave their alms to be seen of men. There was 
nothing meaner in His eyes than the thirst for notoriety, 
and some of the most charming exhibitions of his charac- 
ter were given in the private circle of His disciples, and 
in the humble homes of such as Mary and Martha. His 
publv; life was a life of service. He had a work to do ? 
and was straitened until it should be accomplished. 
His was a life of privation and discomfort. With the 
burden of a public life upon Him, moving among the 
palaces of Jerusalem and the rural homes of the villages 
of Judea, it was more tban an exhibition of His pover- 
ty when He said — " Foxes have holes, and the birds of 



Public and Private Life. 259 



the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where 
to lay His head." 

It will, of course, be useless for me to talk to those 
who have eaten of the insane root ; but to the world 
of young life, now emerging into manhood and woman- 
hood, something may perhaps be said with profit. 
There is nothing good in public life, nothing valuable 
in notoriety, that can compensate for the abandonment 
of a private sphere those men and women who make 
the sacrifice. If duty call you to office, or a worthy 
character and worthy works lift you into public notice, 
bear the honor well, but grudge the smallest charm 
that it steals from your private life. Let that be as gen- 
erous in its conditions and as wide in its sympathies as 
you can make it, and be sure that in it will be found 
the truest wealth that the world can give you. Learn 
to look upon all hunters for notoriety, for notoriety's 
sake, all itching for public life for the sake of its pub- 
licity, all greed for office for the purpose of catching 
the public eye, with contempt, as the meanest of all 
mean ambitions. And when you find yourself listening 
to the suggestions of an ambition like this, regard it as 
a disease, which only a more worthy and generous pri- 
vate life can cure. 



IK>* 



XXIH. 



HOME. 



" The fire burns brightest on one's own hearth." 
"A tree often transplanted neither grows nor thrives." 
" He who is far from home is near to harm." 
" He who is everywhere is no where." 

WIND and water wander round the world, and 
grow fresher for the journey. The lost dia- 
mond knows no difference between the dust where it 
lies and the bosom from which it fell ; but every thing 
that has vitality requires a home. Every thing that 
lives seeks to establish permanent relations with that 
upon which it must depend for supplies. Every plant 
and every animal has its country, and in that country a 
favorite location, where it finds that which will give it 
the healthiest development, and the most luxurious life. 
Maize will not grow in England, and oranges are not 
gathered in Lapland. The white bear pines and dies 



Home. 261 

under the equator, and the lion refuses to live in polar 
latitudes. The elm of a century may not be trans- 
planted with safety, unless a large portion of its home 
be taken with it. In jungles and dens, in root-beds and 
parasitic footholds, in rivers, and brooks, and bays, in 
lakes and seas, in cabins, and tents, and palaces, every 
thing that lives, from the lowest animal and plant to 
the lordliest man, has a home — a place, or a region, 
with whose resources its vitality has established rela- 
tions. I have no doubt, with analogy only for the basis 
of my belief, that God, the fountain of life, has a home, 
and that there is somewhere in space a place which we 
call heaven. 

What is true of ail organic material life is equally true 
of all mental and spiritual life. It is not because the soul 
is the tenant of a body which must have a home, that it, 
too, is subjected to a like necessity. The soul is alive, and 
must feed that it may continue to live, and that it may 
thrive. It takes root in material things, or in the spiritual 
facts that invest and permeate them, no less than in so- 
ciety; through multiplied filaments of relation ; and its 
roots may never be violently dislocated without serious 
damage to its life. Let a man be removed from his 
accustomed place in the world, and from the society of 
wife and children, and friends and neighbors, and twen- 
ty-four hours will suffice to make him a weaker man, 
and to institute in him either a general or special pro- 



262 Gold-Foil. 

cess of demoralization. The home-sickness of the Swiss 
soldier is a genuine disease, with a natural cause which 
operates independently of his will and beyond his con- 
trol. The soul that has once adjusted itself to its con- 
ditions, and has found the food necessary to nourish its 
growth and augment its vital wealth, is nearest to its 
good ; and the moment it leaves these conditions for 
those which are strange, it approaches its evil. Let 
the accustomed influences which hold it to virtue, and 
strengthen its power to resist temptation, and nourish 
its religious life, be escaped from, and it will more readi- 
ly become the prey of its own evil propensities, and of 
the demoralizing influences that assail it from without; 
These facts find confirmation in familiar popular ex- 
perience. The influence of vacation and summer travel 
has been felt by multitudes. Some of our most exem- 
plary men, who have never been known to kick over 
the traces of propriety at home, break in the dasher and 
run away with the vehicle at a sea-side hotel. The 
glass of wine, which never meets their lips at home, is 
indulged in without alarm among strangers. Bowling 
alleys and whist tables and billiard rooms, which are 
considered very bad things when among acquaint- 
ances, are transformed into excellent institutions in dis- 
tant locations. Dignified gentlemen — officers of the 
church and officers of the state — become boyish and 
hilarious — not unfrequently uproarous — in an unfamiliar 



Home. 263 

presence. The cords of the moral nature, kept taut in 
the presence of familiar associates, adapt themselves 
with marvellous readiness to the prevalent feebleness of 
tension found in the humid atmosphere of watering 
places. 

Fixedness of location becomes, then, a condition 
vitally necessary to the growth of a true character, and 
the preservation of the health and harmony of the 
functions of the soul. The spul, like the body, lives by 
what it feeds on. It must increase, or it must diminish. 
Travel has its benefits, but they are indirect. They 
come from rest — not from growth. The direct influ- 
ence of travel is dissipation. Xo man ever comes back 
from travel with his powers unimpaired. The power to 
concentrate the mind, and to perform labor in the ac- 
customed way, is, in a measure, lost, and must be re- 
acquired. N"ow, if this condition of fixedness be 
necessary to those who already possess character and 
Christian principle, how T much more necessary is it to 
those who are mainly held to propriety and virtue by 
outward influences. The young men who leave Christ- 
ian homes in the country, go to the city, and, finding 
the restraints of home removed, plunge into various 
forms of sin. The young women who gather in board- 
ing-houses, which are so far without a home-character 
that they are regarded only as places to eat and sleep 
in, rarely fail of receiving serious moral injury. A con- 



264 Gold-Foil 



stant traveller who is constantly devout may possibly 
exist, but I have never seen him. The itinerant pro- 
fessions have never, I believe, been noted for exhibitions 
of intellectual growth, or profound piety. Gold hunters 
jol California and Australia become in a few months 
semi-savages. No genuine observer can decide other- 
wise than that the homes of a nation are the bulwarks 
of personal and national safety and thrift. A curse 
upon all those fantastic methods of living, dreamed of 
by socialism ancl communism, which would sacrifice 
home to the meagre economies of great establishments, 
where humanity is fed in stalls like cattle ! 

I may legitimately qualify or adapt w T hat I have 
said so far as to admit that a poor home w r ith a poor 
location may be exchanged for a better one. A plant 
may be dislocated from an old, and removed to a new 
bed, not unfrequently with advantage. It may exhaust 
the soil where it stands, and demand more room for its 
roots. I have seen many men greatly improved by 
transplantation, but the process of adaptation and ac- 
climation through which they w r ere obliged to pass, 
before they could establish intimate relations with the 
new soil, was proof of the difficulty and danger of the 
process. This transplanting process is constantly going 
on, however, with good results. The wife in the new 
home is more than the daughter in the old one. New 
food, new influences, more room, fresh functions are 



Home. 265 

always beckoning us to better locations ; but the lives 
are comparatively few that exhaust a home of medium 
advantages. The acquisition of a good home is one of 
the first objects of life — a home where the soul has ex- 
clusive rights — a home where it may grow undisturbed, 
sending out its roots into a fertile society, and lifting 
up its branches into the sunlight of heaven — a home 
out from which the soul may go on its errands and 
enterprises, and to which it may return for its rewards 
— a home which, along the conduits of memory, may 
bear pure nourishment to children and children's chil- 
dren while it stands, and even after it has fallen. 

I recall a home like this, long since left behind in 
the journey of life ; and its memory floats back over 
me with a shower of emotions and thoughts toward 
whose precious fall my heart opens itself greedily like 
a thirsty flower. It is a home among the mountains — 
humble and homely — but priceless in its wealth of asso- 
ciations. The waterfall sings again in my ears, as it 
used to sing through the dreamy, mysterious nights. 
The rose at the gate, the patch of tansy under the win- 
dow, the neighboring orchard, the old elm, the grand 
machinery of storms and showers, the little smithy 
under the hill that flamed with strange light through 
the dull winter evenings, the wood-pile at the door, the 
ghostly white birches on the hill, and the dim blue 
haze upon the retiring mountains — all these come back 
12 



266 Gold-Foil. 



to me with an appeal which touches my heart and 
moistens my eyes. I sit again in the doorway at sum- 
mer nightfall, eating my bread and milk, looking off 
upon the darkening landscape, and listening to the 
shouts of boys upon the hill-side, calling or driving 
homeward the reluctant herds. I watch again the 
devious way of the dusty night-hawk along the twilight 
sky, and listen to his measured note, and the breezy 
boom that accompanies his headlong plunge toward the 
earth. 

Even the old barn, crazy in every timber and gap- 
ing at every joint, has charms for me. I try again 
the breathless leap from the great beams into the bay. 
I sit again on the threshold of the widely open doors 
— open to the soft south wind of spring — and watch 
the cattle, whose faces look half human to me, as they 
sun themselves, and peacefully ruminate, while, drop 
by drop, the dissolving snow upon the roof drills holes 
through the wasting drifts beneath the eaves, down into 
the oozing offal of the yard. The first little lambs of 
the season toddle by the side of their dams, and utter 
their feeble bleatings, while the flock nibble at the hay 
rick, or a pair of rival wethers try the strength of their 
skulls in an encounter, half in earnest and half in play. 
The proud old rooster crows upon his dunghill throne, 
and some delighted member of his silly family leaves 
her nest, and tells to her mates and to me that there is 



Home. 267 

another egg in the world. The old horse whinnies in 
his stall, and calls to me for food. I look up to the 
roof, and think of last year's swallows— soon to return 
again — and hear the tortions of their musical morocco, 
as it wraps their young, and catch a glimpse of angular 
sky through the diamond-shaped opening that gave 
them ingress and egress. How, I know not, and care 
not, but that old barn is a part of myself — it has entered 
into my life, and given me growth and wealth. 

But I look into the house again, where the life 
abides which has appropriated these things, and finds 
among them its home. The hour of evening has come, 
the lamps are lighted, and a good man in middle life — 
though very old he seems to me — takes down the well- 
worn Bible, and reads a chapter from its hallow r ed 
pages. A sw^eet woman sits at his side, with my sleepy 
head upon her knee, and brothers and sisters are 
grouped reverently around. I do not understand the 
words, but I have been told that they are the words of 
God, and I believe it. The long chapter ends, and 
then we all kneel down, and the good man prays. I 
fall asleep with my head in the chair, and the next 
morning remember nothing of the w r ay in which I went 
to bed. After breakfast the Bible is taken down, and 
the good man prays again ; and again and again is the 
worship repeated through all the days of many golden 
years. The pleasant converse of the fireside, the 



268 Gold-Foil 



simple songs of home, the words'of encouragement as 
I bend over my school-tasks, the kiss as I lie down to 
rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless 
nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and 
approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every 
sorrow and sweetens every little success — all these re- 
turn to me amid the responsibilities which press upon 
me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and, 
straying, had lost my way. 

Well, the good man grew old and weary, and fell 
asleep at last, with blessings on his lips for me. Some 
of those who called him father lie side by side with him 
in the same calm sleep. The others are scattered, and 
dwell in new homes, and the old house and barn and 
orchard have passed into the possession of strangers, 
w T ho have learned, or are learning, to look back upon 
them as I do now. Lost, ruined, forever left behind, 
that home is mine to-day as truly as it ever was, for 
have I not brought it aw^ay with me, and shown it to 
you ? It was the home of my boyhood. In it I found 
my first mental food, and by it was my young soul 
fashioned. To me, through weary years, and many 
dangers and sorrows, it has been a perennial fountain 
of delight and purifying influences, simply because it 
was my home, and w^as and is a part of me. The 
rose at the gate blooms for me now. The land- 
scape comes when I summon it, and I hear the voices 



Home. 269 

that call to me from lips which memory makes im. 
mortal. 

Thus the memory of the past joins hands with the 
experience and observation of to-day, to illustrate and 
enforce the philosophy which I have propounded. A 
homeless man, or a man hopeless of home, is a ruined 
man. A man who, in the struggles of life, has no home 
to retire to, in fact or in memory, is without life's best 
rewards and life's best defences. Away from home, 
shut off from the income of those influences which feed 
his life — from those relations along which the life of 
God is accustomed to flow to him — a man stands ex- 
actly where evil will the most readily get the mastery 
of him. A man is always nearest to his good when at 
home, and farthest from it when away. 

One of the very first duties of life, I say again, is 
the establishment of a home which shall be to us and 
to our children the fountain and reservoir of our best 
life ; and this home should be a permanent one, if pos- 
sible. Home is the centre of every true life, the place 
where all sweet affections are brought forth and nur- 
tured, the spot to which memory clings the most fond- 
ly, and to which the wanderer returns the most gladly. 
It is worth a life of care and labor to win for ourselves, 
and the dear children whom we love as ourselves, a 
home whose influence shall enrich us and them while 
life lasts. God pity the poor child who cannot asso- 



270 Gold-Foil. 



ciate his youth with some dear spot where he 
drank in life's freshness, and shaped the character he 
tears ! 

The choosing of a home is one of the most momen» 
tous steps a man is ever called upon to make. If we 
plant a tree with the hope to sit some time beneath its 
shadow, and eat of its fruit, we do not plant it in the 
sand, or in a stream of running water. It is astonish- 
ing to see the multitudes that thoughtlessly plant their 
homes in moral and intellectual deserts — to see them 
building houses where there is no society, or only that 
which is bad, where the church-bell is never heard, and 
where a fertile and fruitful home-life is absolutely im- 
possible. For money men will rush from the healthful 
and pleasant country village to the feverish and stony 
city, or forsake a thousand privileges that are valuable 
beyond all price, and settle in a wilderness ^vhere the 
degeneration of their home is certain. Circumstances 
may force one into locations like these, but they can 
only be regarded as calamitous. Communion is the 
law of growth, and homes only thrive where they sus- 
tain relations with each other. 

The sweetest type of heaven is home — nay, heaven 
itself is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive 
the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is 
the great object of life. It stands at the end of 
every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom ; 



Home. 



271 



and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we 
not discern across the river that divides it from the 
life beyond, glinrpses of the pleasant mansions pre- 
pared for us. 



XXIV. 

LEARNING AND WISDOM. 

; A mere scholar at court is an ass among apes." 
' A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning." 
' Wisdom does not always speak in Greek and Latin." 
' A man must sell his ware at the rate of the market" 



THE intrinsic value of learning, as a possession and 
a power, is exhibited most remarkably, perhaps, 
in a man who knows every thing, and is nothing. He 
may be likened to a pond full of water, without an out- 
let. The water is all very well in itself, though none 
the better for being stagnant. A few lazy lily-pads 
may seek the sun upon its surface, but its chief office is 
to drink old starlight, to entertain the shadows of the 
tall trees that grow upon its banks, and to receive 
them when they fall. If it can be artificially tapped, 
for the purpose of feeding some literary institution, as 
the Bostonians have tapped the Cochituate, it is very 



Learning and Wifdom. 273 

well ; and this seems to be about the only rise it can 
be appropriated to. Very unlike this is the learning 
that has a natural, common-sense delivery, through a 
stream that carries out into the world, full and free, its 
aggregated crystal, to feed the roots of flowers and 
grasses, and slake the thirst of flocks and herds, and 
torture the sunshine as it slides down rocky rapids, 
and turn the mill-wheel that grinds the corn and 
weaves the fabrics of the poor, and 

" Repeat the music of the rain " 

at the feet of plashy waterfalls, and join and mingle in 
the river of human action that sweeps on to fill the 
ocean of human achievement. I do not think that it 
can be said, truthfully, that learning possesses intrinsic, 
independent value, or that it has power, in and of it- 
self, to make a man either valuable to himself or the 
world. Learning may as well lie dormant in dead 
books as in dead men. I would as soon have a library 
that costs nothing, after purchase, but the dusting, as 
a learned man who eats and drinks and wears respecta- 
ble broadcloth. In fact, the library is more orna- 
mental and less troublesome than the man, and is not 
always painfully reminding one that it might possibly 
have made a good tin-peddler if it had begun early 
enough in life. 

I am aware that this is not the usual view of this 
12* 



subject. Some, perhaps, assent to it rationally, but 
practically it is hardly entertained at all. The pupil 
in the humblest school is estimated entirely according 
to his capacity to cram into his mental maw and retain 
the facts in philosophy, science, and history set before 
him. Memory is every thing ; reason, thorough intel- 
lectual digestion, and symmetrical intellectual develop- 
ment, are nothing. This runs up the whole grade of 
educational institutions, and comes to a head not un- 
frequently on Commencement days, when the ass of a 
class pronounces the valedictory, to subside into nonen- 
tity, and the really educated man leaves without an 
appointment, and with the pitying contempt of the 
Faculty, to win the world's prizes, reflect honor upon 
the college, and to take rank among the intellectual 
giants of his time. Learning and education are widely 
deemed identical things and synonymous words. Con- 
sequently we have among the learned, in a work-a-day 
world like this, constant surprises. They find them- 
selves shelved, laid aside, left behind, while the un- 
learned take their places in the world's eye, in the 
world's heart, and in the world's work. Cobblers 
represent a state full of colleges in the national coun- 
cils, machinists become brilliant speakers and wise 
governors, and country merchants stand at the head 
of educational systems that embrace the growing mind 
of a state. All the developments of the age serve to 



Learning and Wifdom. 275 

illustrate the superiority of wisdom and common sense 
to mere learning, -and the utter worthlessness of all 
learning, when dissociated from those qualities and 
powers which can bring it into relation with the prac- 
tical questions and eveiy-day life of the time. 

I am not seeking to depreciate learning, but to de- 
fine its real value and its only value. It has stood in 
the way of the world's progress, almost as much as it 
has contributed to it. Its tendency is to worship the 
old — to abide within the bounds of old formularies in- 
vented by a less developed life than ours, to look chaos- 
ward for light instead of millennium- ward, to seek for 
truth among the broken fountains of the schools rather 
than at truth's own fountain, to follow in the track of 
old systems grown too narrow for the expanding life 
of the present, and to enchain itself with the bonds of 
old creeds and old philosophies. The spirit of learning, 
particularly as manifested through the learned profes- 
sions, is an arrogant, self-sum cient, self-complacent, and 
proscriptive spirit. It lays its ban on all schemes of 
improvement, all experimental search for truth, all 
speculation in the field of thought, which itself does 
not originate. All trade carried on outside its marts 
is contraband. It calls unlearned thinkers " quacks," 
indiscriminately. All systems of philosophy and art, 
of which it is not the father, are illegitimate. 

Medicine is a " learned profession," and its learning 



276 Gold-Foil. 



has been converted into its bane. It is bound to its 
books, and its formulas, and its unreasoning routine 
<with a devotion so insane, that its professors band 
themselves in societies by which every member is kept 
to his creed through fear of proscription, and by which 
all outside experimenters in the healing art, however 
truth-loving, ingenious and scientific, are professionally 
and socially damned. Any man who leaps out of the 
regular old professional frying-pan, alights in a fire of 
professional malediction. It is all a regular physician's 
reputation is worth to seek for truth out of the wqII- 
trodden, regular channels, particularly if the new chan- 
nels have become objects of professional prejudice and 
jealousy. The consequence of this is, of course, to 
retard the progress of medicine as a healing art. Medi- 
cal learning has absolutely fought against every great 
medical discovery, and not unfrequently against im- 
portant discoveries in the constituent sciences. All 
other arts have advanced within the last century be- 
yond calculation. It has been a century of progress in 
art and discovery in science ; but we look in vain for 
those advances in medical science and art which placf 
them even-footed with their thrifty sisterhood. 

Let me not be misapprehended in these statements. 
I am neither talking about nor against any system of 
medicine. I am simply condemning that arrogant 
6pirit of professionally associated learning, which as- 



Learning and Wifdom. 277 

sumes the monopoly of all that is truly known of the 
subject of medicine, and the privilege and right of 
making all changes and discoveries in medical art and 
science. I condemn the spirit which refuses to see, and 
hear, and consider, and treat respectfully, all truth, by 
whatever man discovered — from whatever source it 
may proceed. I condemn the spirit which makes a 
man a bondslave to 'a system devised by other men, 
and whose prominent effect is to create more reverence 
for authority than for truth. I condemn the spirit 
which sets learning above wisdom and common sense. 
I condemn the spirit which, in effect, binds men to a 
blind, unreasoning routine, and forbids their entrance 
into the field of intelligent, rational experiment. I 
condemn the spirit which makes medical heterodoxy a 
social crime, to be punished by social proscription. I 
condemn the spirit which is the principal hindrance to 
the development of the noblest, most humane, most 
useful, and most important of all the arts. 

The law, too, is a learned profession, whose only le- 
gitimate office is to promote the ends of justice among 
men, and whose constant practice is to pervert justice, 
or prevent it, by resort to the technicalities and forms 
with which it is hide-bound. There is no department 
of human interest that is so full of the lumber — the old 
dead stuff — of learning, as the law. A simple matter 
of justice between man and man would seem to be a 



278 Gold-Foil 



simple matter to adjudicate, on a competent represen- 
tation of facts. It would seem to be a matter easily to 
be handled and quickly disposed of; but learning re- 
sorts to forms for delay, and picks flaws in forms for 
escape, and hunts among maggots for precedents, and 
bewilders with the array of authority, until that which 
is simple becomes complicated, and an affair of thirty 
minutes becomes a thing of ten years. I have such a 
respect for the law, that I believe that if every law and 
law-book ever written were smitten from existence, the 
honest, common-sense lawyers of to-day could frame 
codes of law and rules for their administration that 
would shorten and cheapen the processes of justice by 
the amount of nine-tenths. I believe that every law- 
yer believes this, yet he allows this rotten, cumbersome 
conglomeration of relics of effete institutions, and pro- 
ducts of defunct ingenuities, to warp, and mould, and 
modify his nature, till he becomes a slave of authority 
and precedent in every thing, with red tape in every 
button-hole, and a green bag on his head. 

Religion is a simple thing, so simple that " a way- 
faring man, though a fool, need not err therein." The 
only fountain of religious truth is the Bible. We have 
it in our native tongue, and many a simple soul, with- 
out the aid of clergyman or schoolman, has drawn from it 
the inspiration of a new life and all the instruction that 
he needed touching his relations to God and men. Yet 



Learning and Wifdom. 279 

theology — human invention and human learning — has 
made religion a very complicated thing. It has ele- 
vated dogma, and creed, and formulary into promi- 
nence, and debased love and life into obscurity. It in 
6ists more on faith in tenets than in God, and denies to 
a Christian spirit the fellowship which it accords to 
rational belief, The disgraceful wrangles of the relig- 
ious newspapers, the great disputes of the schools, and 
the high controversies of the pulpit and the pamphlet, 
are the quarrels and strifes for mastery of theologians, 
not Christians — of learning, not love. Theology clings 
to old words and phrases after their life has departed. 
Theology is arrogant, selfish, and proud. Theology ex- 
cludes from the table of the Lord those whom He has 
accepted. Theology denies fellowship and communion 
to those whom Love expects to meet in Heaven. The- 
ology casts out of the synagogue those who rise to 
think, while Christ forgives those who stoop to sin, and, 
without condemnation, bids them sin no more. Theol- 
ogy builds rival churches, pits against each other rival 
sects, and wastes God's money. I believe that it would 
be every way better for the world, if every book of 
dogmatic and controversial theology could be blotted 
out of existence, and Christendom were obliged to 
begin anew, drawing every thing from the great 
Book of Books, leaving Paul and Apollos, and 
Princeton, and ISTew Haven, and Cambridge, behind, 



280 Gold-Foil. 



and learning of Him " who spake as never man 
spake." 

The long and short of the matter is, that the learned 
world has become so deeply involved in the thoughts 
of those w^ho have gone before — so accustomed to fol- 
lowing old channels, and to paying reverence to the 
opinions and systems of schools, that it cannot step out 
freely into the field of truth and handle things as it 
finds them. The common sense that deals with things 
instead of systems which treat of them, and the wisdom 
which grows out of this intimate contact and loving as- 
sociation with the actualities of human life and expe- 
rience, are worth more to the world than all the learn- 
ing in it. This handling of the vital realities of to-day 
with the gloves of dead men ; this slow dragging of 
the trains of the present over old grassgrown turn- 
pikes ; this old monopoly of power and privilege among 
interests that touch every individual — the highest and 
the humblest ; this stopping of the wheels of progress, 
at every toll-gate and frontier, for the benefit of learned 
publicans, is certainly against the common sense of the 
world, as it undoubtedly is against " the spirit of the 
age," if anybody knows exactly what that is. Any 
thine and every thing which places fetters upon the 
spirit of inquiry, which blinds the eyes of discovery, 
and abridges the freedom of thought, whether it be 
contained in the lore of past ages or of the present 



Learning and Wifdom. 



281 



time, is a thing to be contemned and abjured. A living 
man with a carcase lashed to his back may creep but he 
cannot run. 

Learning runs back for every thing, and reaches for- 
ward for nothing. It educates the young Christian 
mind of to-day by leading it through a literature whose 
highest inspirations were found in paganism. It seeks 
for models of style and expression among authors en- 
throned among the classical, who only became worthy 
of the distinction by laying their hearts by the side of 
Nature, that realm which is spread all around us now, 
illuminated with Christian light, yet forsaken for second- 
hand sources of instruction. It ignores the theory and 
the fact of human progress, and reverses the order of 
nature by making an old world obedient to a young 
world. 

But I stay too long from the definition of the legiti- 
mate sphere and real value of learning. Whenever 
learning becomes tributary to wisdom, it occupies its 
legitimate sphere, and by the amount of its tribute is it 
valuable. The soul that abides in learning as an end — 
that pursues learning as an end — that finds in it food, 
raiment, and guidance — that surrenders itself to the 
records of other minds, perverts learning and perverts 
itself. The soul that uses learning as a means by which 
to project itself into a higher life — that stands upon it, 
with all its truth and all its falsehood, as upon a platform 



282 



Gold-Foil. 



from which it may survey a better truth and a nobler 
issue — uses learning aright, and is enriched. The fu- 
ture is an untrodden realm. Around each step, as the 
world advances, new circumstances w T ill gather, new 
emergencies arise, new problems present themselves for 
solution. With these circumstances, emergencies, and 
problems, the common sense and wisdom of the world 
are to deal, and not the world's learning. We do not 
repeat through unvarying cycles the experiences of the 
past. Comparatively little of the records of life and 
thought of the ages that are gone can have direct rela- 
tion to the ages that are to come. If the learned men 
of the present find themselves left behind in the race 
of life, it is simply and only because, while they have 
been walking among graves, or busying themselves 
with facts for which the real life of the world has no 
use, the wisdom and common sense of the world have 
got in advance of them. A man must sell his ware at 
the rate of the market, not only, but he must supply 
the market with what it demands. 

But learning has a noble value. It is like the mould 
that accumulates from the decay of each succeeding 
year of vegetation. It furnishes a humus into which 
the roots of mental and moral life may penetrate for 
nourishment, but out of which that life must spring and 
mount into the air and sunlight. Human life is not a 
potato— a bloated tuber that battens in the muck of 



Learning and Wifdom. 



283 



other times, but a stalk of maize, burdened with golden 
fruitage, and whispering through all its leaves of the 
life within it and the influences without it. It is not a 
thing whose issue and end are in its roots, but in a life 
to which those roots are tributary ; and all the learning 
which may not be assimilated to that life is as valueless 
as the dust of its authors. 




S0fc~3J 



XXV. 

RECEIVING AND DOING. 

44 Virtue consists in action. 1 ' 

44 Ho who does no more than another, is no better than another.' 

44 Let not him who has a mouth ask another to blow." 

44 Do good if you expect to receive good." 



THERE is no healthy physical life without a proper 
balance of the active and receptive habitudes of 
the body. If a man eat too much and act too little, he 
will become gross and gouty, or dull and dyspeptic. 
If he act too much and eat too little, he will be weak 
and inefficient, or spasmodic and irascible. It is not 
enough to eat ; it is not enough to work ; but eating 
and working should go hand in hand — the first being 
sufficient to supply the vital expenditure, and the vital 
expenditure being sufficient to exhaust the supply fur- 
nished by the food. By this balance, the digestive 
functions are kept sharp and healthy, and the muscular 



Receiving and Doing. 285 



organs are developed to the measure of their power, 
The man who eats much and works little is necessarily 
a stupid man ; but the man who expends in labor what 
he has received in food, in a legitimate way, finds him- 
self, under favorable conditions, the possessor of a happy 
and a healthy life. 

We can have no better illustration than this of the 
necessity to healthy mental life of the preservation of a 
proper balance between the active and receptive atti- 
tudes and habitudes of the mind. The mind that imag- 
ines that its grand good is to be achieved while in its 
receptive attitude — that is bent on receiving and ac- 
quiring — will find itself greatly mistaken ; yet the 
theory of education is mainly the theory of acquiring, 
and contemplates almost entirely a receptive habit. 
The honors paid to simple learning are tributes to the 
faculty and fact of mental stuffing. A large propor- 
tion of the very learned men of the world are those 
who really do nothing for themselves or their race — 
who are not recognized as powers in society, and 
whose simplicity, lack of common sense, and inability to 
take care of themselves, make them the laughing-stock 
of boys who have ciphered through the Rule of Three, 
and learned to look out for number one. There is a 
curse on all intellectual gormandizing — all reception 
of mental food that is not made tributary to mental 
power. An individual who is simply a man of learning 



286 Gold-Foil. 



— whose life has been expended in acquisition — is no 
man at all. A man of science who does not go out 
from books into discovery, or who does not aim to 
apply his knowledge to practical life, or who does not 
become active in organizing and imparting the knowl- 
edge he has acquired, must become intellectually an 
invalid, or an imbecile. 

This is an age of reading, and I am glad that it is ; 
but there is a great deal of reading that is as much 
mental dissipation as there is eating that is a waste of 
bodily power. Newspapers, books, and magazines, are 
devoured by the cargo, for which the devourers render 
no return, and from which they gain no strength. A 
great reader — a constant and universal reader — is rarely 
a good worker. A receptive habit of mind, that can 
only find satisfaction in devouring, without digesting, 
illimitable print, is mental death to a man. It is essen- 
tial dissipation, opposed alike to healthy mental life and 
development, and positive usefulness in the world. This 
perfect balance between reception and action — between 
acquiring and doing — cannot be disturbed in the men- 

al any more than in the muscular world, without bring- 
ing with it disease and imbecility. 

The facts that I have stated with regard to the body 
and the mind are important enough in themselves to 
call for exhibition, but they serve to illustrate, with 

peculiar force, the dangers of the receptive habit that 



Receiving and Doing. 287 



prevails in the realm of spiritual things. It is no less 
an age of preaching than of reading. All over this 
land congregations of uncounted thousands go up every 
Sunday to be played upon by sermons — to have their 
intellects quickened, their sympathies excited, their 
imaginations inspired, and their whole spiritual natures 
acted upon by their preacher. They want a morning 
sermon, and an afternoon sermon, and many of them 
would be glad to have an evening sermon. They go to 
their weekly prayer-meeting, and would always be glad 
to have a sermon there. They love to have their 
hearts raked open and stirred up by an eloquent ex- 
hortation, or melted by the pathos of a touching prayer. 
Their hearts are not only open and crying for more 
from the preacher, but they are open toward God, and 
crying to Him for more. They thirst for the influx of 
divine influences that shall elevate their spiritual frame. 
Receptive always, thirsting and hungering always, al- 
ways eating and drinking, they become thoroughly dis- 
sipated in religion, their spiritual life degenerates into 
an emotional form, and so they become unfitted for 
Christian action. 

I have known multitudes of good and pure people 
who were almost utterly useless in the world, and 
powerless in themselves, by remaining for years in this 
strictly receptive attitude. I have known multitudes 
who go to a prayer-meeting to have a good time, pre- 



288 Gold-Foil. 



cisely the same as others would go to a ball to have a 
good time. Their religious exercises have become a 
sort of holy amusement. They go to be stirred and 
refreshed, to have their emotions excited, and to re- 
ceive something which shall make them feel. They 
care not so much to learn how to do better as to be 
made to feel better. Exaltation of emotion — spiritual 
intoxication — is the object mainly sought for. Woe be 
to the preacher if he fail so to act upon them as to 
procure the fulfilment of this object. It will not be 
enough that he lay down the law and line of duty with 
faithfulness, and spend his days in visits and labors of 
sympathy and love. He must preach with power ; he 
must pour forth with abundance ; he must bring stimu- 
lating draughts to the greedy lips of decaying emo- 
tions, or he will be proscribed. 

It is precisely thus with the music of the sanctuary. 
The number of hearts that go up actively in a song of 
praise, in a congregation of five hundred persons, is 
very small. Hearts and ears are thrown open to drink 
in the influence of the music, as if the congregation, 
and not God, were addressed by the hymn. In the 
minds of too many ministers prayer itself is something 
to be addressed in about equal parts to the congrega- 
tion and to the Most High. It is regarded not alto- 
gether as the vehicle for aspiration and petition, but as 
a portion of the machinery by which their people are 



Receiving and Doing. 239 

to be moved. I have heard theology, exhortation, and 
even personal condemnation mingled with addresses to 
the throne — not unfrequently a -whole family history. 
It is hard sometimes to tell a sermon from a prayer. If 
ministers so far forget the proprieties of prayer as to 
prostitute it to the purposes of declamation, the people 
may well talk of t; eloquent prayers," and of men 
c: gifted in prayer,*- and forget that it is God and not 
themselves who is the object addressed. Thus it is 
that nearly all the " means of grace," technically speak- 
ing, contemplate a receptive attitude on the part of the 
people. They are preached to, simg to, prayed to ; 
and, as the preaching and singing and praying are cal- 
culated to feed their emotional natures, or otherwise, 
are they satisfied or dissatisfied. 

Xow the whole tendency of this thing is to spiritual 
debility and imbecility. Some of the most inefficient 
churches in this country are those which have what is 
called great preaching, and " splendid music." They 
enjoy their Sabbath ; they have most refreshing seasons 
of communion, they hold delightful prayer-meetings, 
and imagine that all is right with them, while they see 
no results of good to others around the^rn, and wonder 
at it. How long must the world live before the 
Christian church will learn that its power in the world 
depends on what it does, and not on what it feels? 

How long must the church live before it will learn that 
13 



290 Gold-Foil. 



strength is won by action, and success by work, and 
that all this immeasurable feeding without action and 
work is a positive damage to it — that it is the procurer 
of spiritual obesity, gout, and debility ? 

The world of Christian life wants to be turned 
squarely around, and be made to assume a new attitude. 
The world is never to be converted by Christian feel- 
ing. What difference will it make with my careless 
neighbor that I have enjoyed a fine sermon, if it do not 
move me to efforts for his good ? What will it avail 
my sweet friend who languishes upon her death-bed 
that my sympathies have been played upon by eloquent 
T ips, if they do not lead me to her bedside with offices 
of kindness and words of cheer ? Why and how is the 
world better for the powerful representation to me of 
the claims of Christianity, if it do not stir me up to the 
work of gathering and saving the neglected little Snes 
who are growing into a vicious and ignorant manhood 
and womanhood ? Am I selfishly to congratulate my- 
self that I have obtained new views of the divine na- 
ture and the divine love, without zealously endeavoring 
to bring the dumb and dead souls around me to the 
same recognition ? " He that does no more than 
another is no better than another." Life has language 
always. Expression is the natural offspring of posses- 
sion. If my life and my spiritual possessions exceed 
the measure of another man, they will demonstrate 



Receiving and Doing. 291 

their superiority in action. If my humane but un- 
christian neighbor do more good than I do, then his 
humanity, as a motive principle of life, is better than 
my Christianity. 

There are three distinct aspects in which Christian 
action may be viewed with propriety and profit. The 
first relates to spiritual development. There can be no 
growth of power, in any faculty of the soul, or any 
combination of faculties, without use. Action is the 
law and condition of spiritual development, as it is of 
muscular development. That which we try to do, and 
persist in doing, becomes easy to do, not because its 
nature is changed, but because our power to do is de- 
veloped. Christian beneficence is a grace that grows 
by cultivation. A man who is accustomed to give is 
the man who gives freely and gladly. An excellent 
thing for spiritual plethora is the bleeding of the pock- 
et-book. It is only those who do — who act — that be- 
come powers in the Christian world. A man may hear 
a hundred and fifty sermons in a year, and five hundred 
prayers and as many hymns, and be melted and stirred 
and exalted by them, and still be a spiritual baby, 
without nerve, or faculty, or power, and even without 
having learned any thing practically. It is only those 
who do their duty that learn the doctrine aright. It 
is only those who come into contact with human na- 
ture and human condition in the work of Christianity 



292 Gold-Foil. 

that learn and appreciate its relation to that nature 
and condition. We know the truth of a principle by 
applying it in practice. The principle of Davy's safety 
lamp may be received as true, but it is not known to 
be true till the lamp is made and used. We accept the 
proposition that it is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive, but we know nothing about it, until we try it 
and demonstrate it. It is in the line of duty that all 
the highest truth becomes incorporated into the soul's 
knowledge. A Christian who does nothing is not only 
undeveloped as a man of power, but he absolutely 
knows nothing. All truth is to be digested, assimi- 
lated, developed into life, before it really becomes a 
possession— no less than before it becomes a power. 

The second aspect in which Christian action may 
be viewed is that which relates to the outside world. 
In the development of the subject this has already 
been touched upon, but more remains to be said. It 
is a notorious and well-recognized fact that, consider- 
ing the agencies engaged in the Christian work, the 
results are small. I place the responsibility for these 
insignificant results upon the constantly receptive and 
persistently inactive position of the church itself. 
There was never so much good preaching, praying, 
and singing in the world as now. There was never a 
more general disposition to "go to meeting." The 
Christian ministrv were never so put up to the exhibi 



Receiving and Doing. 293 



tion of every faculty within them as in this age. It is 
all feeding, feeding, feeding. It is all ministry to the 
greedy flock. "We pay better salaries than we used 
to, and expect more for the money, yet we grow dead 
and dumb from year to year. The church is not gen- 
erally aggressive. Now and then, here and there, it 
becomes active, and immediately there springs up a 
great reformation, but the lesson is unheeded, and we 
go on gorging and gormandizing, and wonder why 
nothing comes of it but increasing weakness and a 
growing disposition to inaction. 

It is not enough that the Christian give his money 
to feed the poor, and sustain efforts for the reclamation 
of the vicious, and send the Gospel to the heathen, and 
support the church at home. The money is wanted, 
and there must be a more general opening of the purse- 
strings before very great things will be accomplished • 
but more than all is wanted direct personal effort on 
the part of the church. Everywhere a Christian should 
be a positive power, distinctly pronounced in some 
way, so that wherever he carries himself, he will carry 
the power of Christianity. The world says " what 
does he more than others ? " of the constantly recep- 
tive Christian, and entertains a contempt as damaging 
as it is just for all those Christians who do nothing. 

The opinion that the world entertains of a man's 
Christianity is usually a just one. It is rarely far from 



294 Gold-Foil. 



right. It is perfectly legitimate to say of a man who 
professes to be a Christian, and gives no evidence in 
his life and influence of the possession of Christianity 
as a motive power, that his religion is vain. 

It is not only essential to an undefiled religion, that 
a man keep himself unspotted from the world, but he 
must visit the widows and the fatherless — demonstrate 
the life in him by ministry. When the church shall 
become active, and leave behind its laziness and lan- 
guor, and seek for food that it may have more power 
to work, and expend the strength it gets, the world 
will be converted, and it is pretty safe to say that it 
will not before. 

The third aspect in which Christian action may be 
viewed, contemplates its relations to God himself. 
Many a man conscientiously goes up to the weekly 
pulpit-feeding, through storm and sickness, as a matter 
of duty, who never thinks of doing a work of Christian 
mercy, or engaging in any kind of ministry during the 
week. Sometimes a considerable sacrifice of time and 
convenience is made, in order to attend the weekly 
prayer-meeting, by those who manage to keep them- 
selves comfortable in their consciences only by this 
means. Now the Christian world knows its duty well 
enough. It has no need of half the teaching it gets. 
It is always feeding beyond its necessities, and, as I 
honestly believe, to its own damage. Let it ask itself 



Receiving and Doing. 295 

which would please its Master best — teaching some 
ignorant child the way of life, or going to hear a great 
sermon — visiting and consoling some poor mourner, or 
going to a prayer-meeting — stirring up some weak sou] 
to duty, or seeking for an hour of emotional excite- 
ment — going to meeting always, or laboring occasion- 
ally for the reclamation of some sad wanderer from the 
path of virtue ? 

Considering the amount of good which the church 
has received, how great a return has it rendered ? 
"What is it doing, and what has it done, outside of its 
own immediate necessities ? It hires ministers, and 
pays for tracts, and contents itself with the acquisition 
of a cartilaginous and an oleaginous spirit and life. Oh, 
for bone and muscle, and blood and nerve, and courage 
and power ! Is religion one of the fine arts, that it 
should consist in going to meeting in good clothes 
every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night 
and morning? Is there ev^ry thing to receive, and 
nothing to give ? Are we so literally a flock that we 
have, nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding 
only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary ? 
Practically this is the popular Christian notion, but 
how miserably unworthy it is ! 

Action, then, is alike the condition of the develop- 
ment of Christian life as it relates to the Christian him- 
self, of aggressiveness as it relates to the world, and 



296 Gold-Foil. 



of appropriate return for benefits received. Religion 
is not a thing of emotion exclusively, nor even mainly. 
It is a motive power of life in all beneficent directions 
toward man, and in all devotional ways toward God. 
It is a life of reception in one aspect, and a life of action 
in another. Of him to whom much is given much is 
required. Every imbibition of truth and every influx 
of spiritual life is to thrill along the nerves, and invade 
the veins, of the soul's faculties, and find manifestation 
in action. Emotion, feeling — these are well enough if 
they feed the springs of power. Prayer, praise, preach- 
ing — these are all good, and never to be dispensed with ; 
but if the life to which they minister have no manifes- 
tation out of them, it is a failure. 




XXVI 

THE SECRET OF POPULARITY. 

" Self-love is a mote in every man's eye." 

" If you love yourself overmuch, nobody else will love you at all." 
" If I sleep, I sleep for myself; if I work, I know not for whom." 
" The way to be admired is to be what we love to be thought." 



THERE is a class of men in every community that, 
more than any other class, desires popularity, 
and less than any other class gets it. They may be 
men of pleasant address and honorable dealing, but 
there is something about them that repels the popular 
sympathy. If the people were to be questioned as to 
the reasons of their antipathy, they would, in most in- 
stances, find it difficult to make an intelligent answer. 
They would say with Tom Brown : — 

" I do not love thee, Doctor Fell ; 
The reason why I cannot tell, 
But this alone I know full well — 
I do not love thee. Doctor Fell! " 

is* 



298 Gold-Foil. 



The unfailing heart recognizes an unworthy and 
repulsive element in these men, though the intellect 
may fail to comprehend it. Now, if the intellect will 
make direct inquiry, it will find that these lovers of 
popularity are supremely selfish — that they love them- 
selves better than any thing, or anybody else, and that 
all the popularity they long for and seek for is de- 
manded by their self-love. They are not men of gener- 
ous impulses, but of cool and painstaking calculation. 
If they make a gift, it is for a purpose. A policy that 
has its centre in self overrules all their actions. 

This element of popularity in a man's character is 
very little understood. On looking about us, w T e shall 
find the popular favor bestowed with comparatively 
little reference to personal character. Many a man, 
known to be immoral, will have troops of friends, while 
a multitude of others, of whom nothing bad can be 
said, will have the affections of no man. 

These facts show me how closely, side by side, the 
better intuitions and instinctive judgments of the world 
stand with the central principle of Christianity. The 
world, no less than Christianity — the great human 
heart, no less than the true religion — demands that 
men shall be unselfish before they receive personal 
affection and favor. Religion asks for more than un- 
selfishness, because it lays its claims upon personal 
character and personal devotion, but it starts at that, 



The Secret of Popularity. 299 

as the initial point. The world asks that a man shall 
be generous from natural impulse, and not from any 
special principle or policy. It is often that these im- 
pulsively generous men are impulsively vicious, yet 
this does not always, nor often, repel even the good 
from sympathy with them. We love some men in spite 
of ourselves. Our judgment condemns them, our re- 
ligious feelings are offended by them ; yet the one ele- 
ment of good which they possess receives our admira- 
tion and our homage, and we return their cordial grip 
and greeting impulsively, and protest only in secret 
leisure. 

All of us love to stand well with our fellows. We 
thirst for popular esteem, and rejoice in popular good- 
will. This desire for popularity is universal, though it- 
has its birth in widely various motives ; but it is never 
satisfied save when it is called forth by and to generous 
natures. The whole world loves Florence Nightingale, 
simply because she unselfishly sacrificed the ease and 
comfort of a luxurious home, for the purpose of minis- 
tering to the wants of the sick and wounded soldiers. 
Half of the world's admiration of Jenny Lind grows 
out of her characteristic benevolence. The rough fire- 
man who braves the dangers of a burning house, to 
save the life of some helpless inmate, is regarded as a 
hero, and we toss up our cap as he goes by us. The 
man or the woman who, from a generous impulse, risks 



300 Gold-Foil. 



danger and death for others, or who, from a similar 
impulse, becomes the subject of suffering or incon- 
venience that others may be benefited, compels the 
homage of every cognizant heart. 

If we love ourselves overmuch, nobody else will 
love us at all. We cannot get the world's esteem 
without paying for it in advance ; and even then our 
sacrifices will avail nothing unless they are made with- 
out reference to the object of gaining popularity. The 
world has an insight into motives which easily detects 
the calculating element in all beneficence and all gener- 
ous doing. It is the native, impulsive, uncalculating 
generosity of a deed that kindles our admiration — the 
doing good without reference to consequences that in- 
spires our love. We demand that a good deed, to be 
the subject of our admiration, shall be the spontaneous 
offspring of an unselfish, chivalrous heart. The mean- 
est man in the world admires magnanimity — the stingi- 
est, uncalculating generosity — although he may feel 
himself incapable of their exercise — just as a man 
physically weak admires a commanding personal prow- 
ess, and a coward a deed of daring. So the tribute to 
generous, unselfish, gallant doing, is universal. 

A thing which is so good and admirable in universal 
human judgment is certainly something which demands 
a careful consideration, especially as in it abides the 
secret of this universally coveted good-will. The world 



The Secret of Popularity. 301 

declares that selfishness is mean, and unselfishness, 
generosity, and magnanimity are noble and admirable. 
This decision cannot be altered, and ought not to be, 
A man whose plans have reference only to himself is a 
contemptible man. We neither love him nor trust 
him. The man who says — " If I sleep, I sleep for my- 
self; if I work, I know not for whom," is a man whom 
all hearts despise — instinctively and inevitably despise. 
It matters not how selfish a man may be, there is some- 
thing in him which tells him that the selfishness he sees 
in others is contemptible. 

I say, then, that the universal judgment is right 
upon this point, and that it indorses the Christian doc- 
trine that selfishness is the central motive power of sin. 
Xow, there is not a soul in the world that admires a 
selfish nature. So far, the human mind is unperverted ; 
and no healthy mind can conceive how God can ad- 
mire such a nature. If I, with my low instincts and 
perverted tastes, demand that a man shall be, or be- 
come unselfish, before I love him, how can I conceive 
that God will love his unchanged character ? I know 
that He cannot, any more than I can, and I am prepared 
to take His definition of the sum and substance of re- 
ligion as the loving of God supremely, and the loving 
of our neighbor as ourselves. Wrapped within this 
word unselfishness, in its full and glorious meaning, lies 
the central principle of Christianity, and from it always 



302 Gold-Foil.- 



unfolds the true Christian life. When God sits su- 
premely on the throne of a human heart — I say su- 
premely — then selfishness is obliterated, and the indi- 
vidual becomes small and insignificant in the presence 
of the great brotherhood. 

I suppose it may be stated as a generally admitted 
truth that mankind are not popular. In other words, 
the race is not held in very high estimation by itself. 
If this were not so, David's declaration that all men 
were liars, was not so very hasty after all ; for, if there 
be a habit everywhere and in all times prevalent, it is 
the habit of detraction. Mankind are pretty universally 
unpopular, or universally malignant, for they have a 
very bad reputation among themselves. I think there 
is some cause for all this hard talk about men which 
the most of us indulge in, and that though many un- 
charitable things maybe said, the unjust things are 
not so plenty. I think that this selfishness of which we 
have been talking is very common — in fact, that very 
few of us can lay claim to any great degree of freedom 
from it. I think that one great reason why we do not 
love our neighbors better, and why our neighbors do 
not love us better, is that they and we are not alto- 
gether lovable. I think that the great bar to a quicker 
and higher development of our social life is the con- 
tempt we feel for one another's selfishness. If all my 
neighbors were free-hearted, generous, magnanimous, 



The Secret of Popularity. 303 

unselfish men, I should love them all as I may hap- 
pen to love one of them who manifests the possession 
of these qualities ; and if I were the possessor of these 
qualities which I most admire in others, I should be 
sure that all my neighbors who know me would love me. 
Christianity, starting in God's fatherhood, bids us 
love our brotherhood. If we love Him, we shall love 
His children, however widely straying and however un- 
amiable, simply because they are members of the same 
family with ourselves. We are nowhere commanded to 
love the devil and his angels, because they do not be- 
long to our family. But Christianity does not demand 
that we shall admire an unlovely man, and choose him 
as a companion, and be happy in his society. It does 
not demand that I give him a good name, while I seek 
to do him good, or conspire to hold him popular while 
I strive to make him better. It does not bid me 
smother my antipathies so far as to ignore his selfish- 
ness, or to accept him as a grateful object of my affec- 
tions. I can love him so far as to wish him well, to la- 
bor for his welfare, and to rejoice in his improvement ; 
can love him in such a manner as to be grateful for all 
the good he receives and achieves ; but, so long as self. 
ishness is dominant in his heart and life, I am not re- 
quired to delight in him, and I could not if I were. 
The heart leaps to receive a worthy love, and will not 
be counselled. 



304 Gold-Foil. 



The secret of the world's unloveliness abides in its 
selfishness. This statement, true in the largest sense, 
is equally true in its most limited application. The 
reason why men are not popular with their fellows, is, 
that their fellows fail to find in them generous, uncal- 
culating impulses — open hearts, free hands, and demon- 
strative good-will. I have no doubt that this statement 
will come to many minds either as a new and strange 
revelation of 'truth, or as a proposition which their 
overweening self-love will compel them to quarrel with. 
I know there are men who are conscious of not being 
generally loved, and yet, who, having strong desires to 
be loved, are at a loss to account for their own unpop- 
ularity. If they accept this doctrine, they can find the 
way to win what they desire. If they reject it, as a 
thing which wounds their self-love and offends them, 
they can have the privilege of being despised while 
they live. God has made selfishness unlovable, and 
shaped the universal human heart to despise it, and He 
has made unselfishness so lovable that we cannot with- 
hold from it our admiration. 

Here comes in the power of Christianity as the trans- 
former of character, and the agent of those changes in 
the human heart and life, which make men not only 
lovely to each other, but to God Himself. To my mind, 
there is no stronger evidence of the truth and divine 
authenticity of Christianity, than the direct blow with 



The Secret of Popularity. 305 

which it hits the nail of human selfishness on the head. 
There is no other system of religion which does this. 
There is no curative scheme of human philosophy which 
even attempts this transformation. No outside plan of 
reformation, even when it has recognized selfishness as 
the root of human evil, has been able to present motives 
of sufficient power to work the necessary regeneration. 
Under the influence of Christianity, I have seen selfish 
men become large-hearted and generous, and have wit- 
nessed the outgoing of their lives into deeds of prac- 
tical good-will. I have never seen this change wrought 
by any other system of religion, nor by any form of hu- 
man philosophy. All- other systems and schemes fail to 
supply the vital principle of a true life and an admira- 
ble character. They are systems and schemes of policy,* 
and plans of rewards and punishments, built upon what 
is good in humanity. They never contemplate the sub- 
version of the central principle of selfishness in the 
heart, and the substitution of the principle of benevo- 
lence. 

As a student of human nature, and an observer of 
the forces brought to bear upon it, I am compelled to 
give this tribute to Christianity. There is either in it 
a combination of powerful motives, rationally to be ap- 
prehended and voluntarily to be adopted, or a new 
principle of life, which, infused into the heart, diffuses 
itself through every artery and vein, and changes that 



306 Gold-Foil. 



life's issues. It is not necessary for me to say which I 
think it is. I only say that there has never been found 
any transforming and reforming agency equal to it ; 
and that I believe it is the only reliable agency in the 
world's transformation. It is this which is to make the 
world altogether lovely like its Founder, who gave His 
whole life to us — gave it out of His overflowing love 
and His unselfish nature. As " self-love is a mote in 
every man's eye," there is no man who does not need 
to acquire this principle of the Christian life, to make 
him more loving and lovely. The heart given to the 
Father, the hand given to the brother, the life given to 
both — truly this makes a man admirable ! Can we re- 
sist loving him ? 

If the instinctive judgments of men coincide with 
and uphold the Christian standard of loveliness, so do 
they go further, and reveal to us what the character of 
that transformation must be which Christianity works 
in the heart and life. It is not enough that a deed be 
beneficent in its results, to secure my homage and ad- 
miration. I must see that the heart out of which it 
came was a generous heart — that that heart was moved 
by hearty sympathy and uncaleulating benevolence. I 
must see no selfish end consulted, no reluctant bending 
to a sense of obligation, no hard yielding to a convic- 
tion of duty. It must be spontaneous— an outburst of 
noble, generous life. This, my judgment tells me, is ad- 



The Secret of Popularity. 307 

mirable, and only this. Now Christianity never works 
its perfect work in the heart until the outgoings of that 
heart are of this character. I am not bound to admire, 
and I cannot admire, a man who, professing to be 
moved by Christian motives, manifests his. life by deeds 
of benevolence that start in a sense of Christian duty 
and Christian obligation. The Christian life must be as 
uncalculating and as spontaneous as the natural life, be- 
fore its expression can touch my admiration by its 
quality. 

The true heart is just as unerring in its judgment 
of what constitutes true Christianity as true humanity. 
Before it will yield its tribute of admiration and affec- 
tion to him who does a deed of good, it demands that, 
in either case, there shall be no selfish consideration of 
any kind. It demands that Christianity shall be as 
spontaneous and chivalrous as humanity, and it knows 
that when it is not, it is not the genuine article. Obli- 
gation implies the idea of justice. The fulfilment of it 
is the payment of a debt. Duty is a thing rationally 
apprehended and intellectually measured. Unselfish 
benevolence — natural, or acquired by the possession of 
the Christian life — blossoms with spontaneous beauty, 
and it is that which we love and which God loves. 

So the secret of being loved is in being lovely, and 
the secret of being lovely is in being unselfish. No man 
liveth to himself, and no man was made to live to him- 



308 Gold-Foil. 



self. He was born with a desire for the good-will of 
others, and with the fact (veiled, perhaps, in many in- 
stances) looking him in the face, that it is impossible 
to get it without the relinquishment of selfishness as 
the ruling motive of his life. The truth is, that the 
curse of selfishness is upon pretty much all our life. It 
blackens and defiles every thing. We have not popu- 
lar men enough to fill decently the offices of govern- 
ment. They are so few that they are not only the sub- 
jects of envy to many, but of suspicion. The world is 
so mean that, unless it happen to know an unselfish man 
personally, it hears of his good deeds only to inquire 
what and how much he expects to make by them. Is 
not this unpopularity of the human race with itself 
rather humiliating ? Knowing the fact and the reason 
of it, let us try to inaugurate a better condition of 
things. 




XXVII. 



THE LORD'S BUSINESS. 

" The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children 
of light." 

" Business is business." 

" Money is wise ; it knows its own way." 



I SUPPOSE my minister — the Rev. Theodore Dunn 
— to be one of the very best in New England. 
If there is any thing that I object to in him, it is his 
uncomfortable faithfulness. But I have always taken 
his pointed discourses and his still more pointed per- 
sonal exhortations in good part, as I know him to be 
the best friend I have, and an honest and thoroughly 
enthusiastic worker in his holy calling. A few weeks 
ago I received a note from him, requesting me to call 
at his study for private conversation upon an important 
topic. I was promptly at his door at the time ap 



310 Gold-Foil. 



pointed, and spent a very pleasant evening with him. 
The special subject upon his mind was the importance 
of conducting all business enterprises upon Christian 
principles. I think he must have heard something of 
my connection with a fancy scheme which it is not 
necessary for me to mention here ; but he had good 
breeding, and said nothing about it. I could do nothing, 
of course, but accede to his excellent propositions, and 
bow to his exhortations. I may say, before going 
further, that he was entirely in the right, and that I 
hope his lesson has done me good. 

After returning home, I thought the matter over. 
This was the seventh time he had sent for me, for the 
purpose of lecturing me. I had had some thoughts on 
the subject of religion which I had never expressed to 
him, and said to myself, " I will turn the tables ; I will 
send for the minister." I gave no time for second 
thoughts, and dispatched a note on the instant, request- 
ing him to call at my office " for private conversation 
on the subject of religion," on the following evening. 
I was in my office at the time appointed, and my minis- 
ter came in sight as the clock struck seven. He greeted 
me cordially, but was evidently a little puzzled. He 
took the seat proffered him, threw open his overcoat, 
and in certain commonplace inquiries, indicated his 
wish that I should commence the conversation. I felt 
a little awkwardly in the position into which I had 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 311 

voluntarily thrown myself; but, determined to make 
the best of it, I assumed the censor and adviser, and 
opened, 

"Mr. Dunn," said I, " you invited me to your house 
to talk to me, in your sacred capacity, of the import- 
ance of conducting business enterprises on Christian 
principles. I have invited you here to-night to talk to 
you on the importance of conducting the Christian en- 
terprise on business principles." 

Mr. Dunn smiled good-naturedly, and bade me 
proceed. 

" Well, sir," said I, " I am a business man, and have 
had, in a somewhat active life, considerable knowledge 
of great enterprises ; but I consider the Christian en- 
terprise as the largest operation ever undertaken by 
human hands. It contemplates nothing less than the 
peaceful subjugation of a rebellious world to the for- 
saken rule of heaven — the restoration of a degenerate 
race to purity and happiness." 

" But it is not man's enterprise," said Mr. Dunn. 

" Hear me through, sir. Moral forces, of varied 
nature and operation, and supernatural influences, as 
the most of us believe, enter into the prosecution of 
this enterprise ; but beyond these I recognize an ele- 
ment of business — an element inherent in every thing 
which can legitimately be called an enterprise. An 
enterprise in any sense is a business enterprise in some 



312 Gold-Foil. 



sense, because it involves management and machinery. 
Christianity has its parish, its society, its officers and 
organizations of various sorts, its missionary associa- 
tions, and its educational institutions. Is it not 
so ? " 

Mr. Dunn simply bowed, and said, " Go on." 

" To the management of the business department 
of the Christian enterprise are called such men as have 
the most practical business tact — men who add to gen- 
eral intelligence, social position, piety, and zeal, that 
acquaintance with the men of the world, and that 
familiarity with the forms, details, and maxims of the 
world's business, which will enable them prudently and 
efficiently to perform their duties. This is a thing of 
men and money, and w r hen money is short, and men 
are scarce, you will admit that management becomes a 
thing of great importance." 

I saw that my visitor was becoming interested. He 
laid off his overcoat entirely, and drew his chair nearer 
to me. 

" Now," said I, resuming, " we must settle, at start- 
ing, exactly what the Christian enterprise is. Is it 
building up our church ? " 

"Ono! " replied Mr. Dunn, " certainly not." 

" Is it building up our sect ? " 

" Not by any means." 

"Well, suppose you tell me, in a few words, what 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 313 

it is," > suggested, for the purpose of leaving the bur- 
den with him, and getting my premises. 

" I should say," replied my minister, " to be con- 
cise, that the Christian enterprise is the enterprise of 
converting the world to Christ." 

" A good answer," I resjDonded. " I accept your 
definition, for it is my own ; and I knew you could give 
no other. Now, I am not going into theology at all. 
It is enough for me to know that eighteen hundred 
years ago, a remarkable personage appeared, who was 
allied alike or in a degree to divinity and humanity, 
and who declared himself to be the Saviour of the 
human race. I will not differ with you, or w^ith any- 
body else, as to how his salvation was to be conferred. 
I know that he possessed a supernal elevation of charac- 
ter, that he lived a spotless life, that he gave utterance 
to the noblest precepts and principles, that he was 
crucified by cruel men, and that he rose again. His 
great mission, announced beneath the conscious pulses 
of Judea's stars, was that of the bearer of good-will to 
all mankind. The commission which he gave to his 
disciples was, c Co ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature.' He began the enterprise, 
and intrusted its completion to the hands of his dis- 
ciples. This is the enterprise which they have under- 
taken; the enterprise which you, Mr. Punn, have de- 
fined. As I look at it, it is a grand, overruling, all- 
14 



314 



Gold-Foil. 



subordinating scheme. If its merits are equal to its 
pretensions, there is not, under the whole heaven, any- 
great work which should not be subordinate to this." 

I had grown a little warm with my talk, and my 
minister smiled in his own pleasant way, and remarked 
that he thought I had mistaken my profession. I bade 
him wait until the conclusion before committing him- 
self on that point. I then resumed. 

"In examining the operations of the propagators of 
Christianity, I find that money stands as the basis of 
nearly all of them. Money builds the church, hires the 
minister, sends the missionary, prints the Bible, drops 
the tract, supports the colporteur, and furnishes the 
life-blood of all the Christian charities. Without money 
comparatively nothing can be done, and co-ordinately 
essential are men ; for without ministers, and mission- 
aries, and colporteurs, and printers, money, devoted to 
this enterprise, would be fruitless. The question is, 
therefore, as to how this money and these men are 
used ? Can you think of an instance, Mr. Dunn, in 
which money has been misused ? " 

"I was just thinking," he replied, "of the little 
town of Montford, up here, which has four church edi- 
fices and not a single minister." 

"Yes," said I, "and there is Plum Orchard, just 
beyond Montford, which contains three ambitious- 
looking church edifices with a poor minister in each — 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 315 

very poor, I may say, in more than one sense. In 
Montford, sectarian zeal has actually exhausted all of the 
available means of Christian effort, and, so far as I can 
learn, the town has not for years been the scene of the 
slightest Christian progress. There are four flocks 
there without a shepherd. Plum Orchard contains 
twelve hundred inhabitants. Half of these do not at- 
tend church at all, partly because they have become 
disgusted with the sectarian strifes that have prevailed 
among the churches, but mostly because the preachers 
(poor men !) have no power over them. Of the re- 
maining half, a moiety attend church in a thriving 
manufacturing village two miles distant, and three 
hundred are left to fight out the bootless battle, which 
keeps three inefiicient leaders in commission, and does 
good to no one. Only the first case is an extreme one 
Similar cases are found everywhere. Now, Mr. Dunn, 
do you blame an unbelieving business world for laugh- 
ing and scoffing at a spectacle like this ? " 

" Very bad, very bad ! " sighed my minister with a 
sad face and a shake of the head. 

" Now, sir," I resumed, "lam not going to say that 
this is not right, for I pretend to hold nothing deeper 
than a business view of it. I am not going to say that 
it is not just as the Head of the church would have it ; 
but I must say, very decidedly, that, viewed in its 
business aspect, it is the most foolish, the most inexcu- 



316 Gold-Foil. 



sable, the most preposterous profligacy. The whole 
world cannot illustrate such another instance of the 
squandering of precious means by organized bands of 
sane business men. I say this in view of the fact which, 
in courtesy, I am bound to admit, that it is all done 
conscientiously, and for the simple purpose of pushing 
forward, in the most efficient manner, the Christian 
enterprise." 

" We must have charity, sir," said Mr. Dunn, in a 
wounded tone. 

" Charity ! " I responded, somewhat warmly, for I 
saw that he had not fully comprehended my meaning ; 
" what has charity to do with it ? I have impugned no 
man's motives. I am simply criticising a business ope- 
ration. Let me illustrate. Suppose that I have a 
business which extends throughout this State. I have 
an article to dispose of which should be in the hands of 
every man within its limits. I cannot visit every town 
and every man myself; therefore I must avail myself 
of a system of offices and agencies. Proper agents 
being scarce, it becomes necessary for me to economize. 
What, therefore, shall be my policy ? Evidently so to 
apportion my offices and agents as to bring the com- 
modity I have to dispose of within the reach of all, if 
possible — of the largest possible number, at least. I 
hold my agents strictly responsible to me for the man- 
ner in which they do my work. I require of them all 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 317 

to hold up their hands and swear to do it faithfully and 
well; not striving for precedence or monopoly, not 
seeking their own aggrandizement, but laboring di- 
rectly to forward my interests and advance my enter- 
prise. This is a plain business operation ; and, strip- 
ping the Christian enterprise of every thing foreign to 
its business element, I place it by the side of that enter- 
prise as a just standard by which to judge it. Jesus 
Christ has something to dispose of to every individual 
of the human race. In order to bring it to the knowl- 
edge of every individual, he has established a system of 
offices and agencies, and committed the work of ex- 
tending them over the world to his people. He re- 
quires of every agent that he shall devote himself, with 
a single purpose, to the forwarding of his great enter- 
prise — the conversion of the world. But his agencies, 
after the lapse of more than eighteen hundred years, 
have been established only upon a small portion of the 
territory, and difficulties seem to clog the path of their 
further progress. We find his followers, all of whom 
profess a supreme wish to forward his enterprise, dis- 
agreeing upon some of the minor and non-essential de- 
tails of the business, dividing themselves, and using up 
the money which he has committed to them in building 
a multitude of splendid and often rival offices, and re- 
taining in each an agent, while a large portion of the 
field is entirely unprovided for. Shut up within the 



318 Gold-Foil. 



walls of a small partisanship, they seem to have lost 
sight of the great enterprise to which they have com- 
mitted themselves ; or, if they sometimes think of it, it 
is with a piteous lamentation over the hinderance of a 
cause in the way of which they have placed every pos- 
sible business obstruction." 

64 We must have charity," reiterated Mr. Dunn, 
moving uneasily in his chair. 

" Now, my good sir," I rejoined, " as you are de- 
termined to make me a censor of motives, rather than 
a critic of policy, I will not have the name without the 
game — you know the old saying. So, when I say that 
the business part of the Christian enterprise is badly 
managed, I will say that, if a business of mine were 
managed thus, I should come to the conclusion that 
my agents care more for themselves than they do for 
my business." 

" I saw where you were coming," replied Mr. Dunn, 
with his kind smile, for he was determined to make a 
sort of enemy of me before he could be complacent. 

"Well,, sir, you brought me here," I replied. 
" Now let me go on. It is a confessed and patent fact 
that money is short and men are scarce. The call is 
uttered and echoed in every quarter of the world for 
more money and more men ; but is it too much to say 
that enough of both have been squandered in the busi- 
ness management of the Christian enterprise to have 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 319 



carried Christianity into every household ? The money 
expended in church edifices, and inefficient govern- 
mental church establishments, and bootless and worse 
than bootless controversies, and the upbuilding of rival 
sects, would have crowned every hill upon God's foot- 
stool with a church edifice, and placed a Bible in every 
human hand. Farther than this : if the men now com- 
missioned to preach the gospel were properly ap- 
portioned to the world's population, millions would 
enjoy their ministrations who never heard the name 
of Jesus Christ pronounced, and never will. The 
towns in Christendom which feebly support, or 
thoroughly starve, two, three, or four ministers, when 
one is entirely adequate for them, are almost num- 
berless." 

"Yes," said Mr. Dunn, "I believe that statement 
is true. I suppose I could preach to this whole town 
in which we five, as well as to my limited congre- 
gation." 

" Precisely, Mr. Dunn. ISTow do you suppose the 
business world around us here can look on and see 
how we manage, and not see the~thriftlessness and in- 
consistency of the whole thing ? And if this business 
world should happen to conclude that men who pro- 
fess what we do, and manage as we do, are not in 
earnest, would it compromise its reason and its com- 
mon sense by it ? " 



320 Gold-Foil. 



" But I thought you to be a lover of art, and always 
glad to see fine church architecture," responded Mr. 
Dunn, endeavoring to shift the burden. 

" You are entirely correct — I wish the world were 
full of it ; but I am talking now as a business man. I 
understand that a church is built with a supreme desire 
for the service of Christianity — as something which is 
to tell directly upon the Christian enterprise. It is a 
simple question of dollars and cents. Do one hundred 
thousand dollars, expended upon a church edifice, half 
of which is devoted simply to ornamental art, exert 
over fifty thousand dollars in power toward the con- 
version of the world ? — for we must always come back 
to this definition of the great enterprise. This is what 
churches are built for, as I understand it ; and I ask 
whether, in this case, fifty thousand dollars are not ab- 
solutely lost to the Christian enterprise ? Is there not 
within the bounds of Christendom enough of bricks, 
and mortar, and mouldy marble, and costly spires, and 
flaming oriels, and gorgeous drapery, and luxurious 
upholstery, and chiming bells, and deftly-chiselled stone, 
all dedicated nominally to the service of Heaven, to 
enrich the whole world with Christian light, were it 
economically dispensed ? " 

"There is undoubtedly something in what you 
have said," replied my minister, "but I think not 
so much as you claim. -Ajid now, as you are so apt 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 321 

at tearing down, suppose you try your hand at build- 
ing up." 

" I do not see that this is needful, for the remedy 
is indicated by the disease ; but if you wish it, I will 
do it willingly. As a business man, it will be impossi- 
ble for me to judge of the relative importance of main- 
taining a certain truth or tenet, acknowledged to be 
non-essential, and the saving of a human soul. That is 
for you to do. I only take the enterprise in gross ; 
and I say to you, as one of the managers of the Chris- 
tian enterprise, that if you are supremely devoted to 
that enterprise, if the great and only end you seek be 
to compass the salvation of the w T orld, then you will 
spend your money and apportion your means in such a 
way that the enterprise shall feel their whole power. 
Here, for instance, in this town, we have four religious 
societies. These happen to be Episcopal, Congrega- 
tional, Methodist, and Baptist. All these people ex- 
pect to meet each other in heaven. They call them- 
selves ' Evangelical Christians,' thus acknowledging 
that non-essential differences of belief keep them from 
thorough fraternization. These men are made a com- 
mon Christian brotherhood by the common reception 
of what they deem to be the essential truths of Chris- 
tianity. One large church and one good pastor, like 
you, Mr. Dunn, would be sufficient for all these sects. 
Now, as they can agree upon the essential truths of 
14* 



322 



Gold-Foil. 



Christianity, why may they not do so formally, and 
leave to every man that Christian liberty of opinion 
upon the non-essentials which belongs to him, and 
which by right of public charter or private choice he 
will exercise under all circumstances. From my knowl- 
edge of human nature I might go further, and say that 
such an exhibition of united devotion to a great cause 
as this would be, and such a demonstration as it would 
furnish of the real, fraternal spirit of Christianity, would 
accomplish more for the Christian enterprise than the 
separate labors of the four sects could hope to accom- 
plish in a quarter of a century." 

" My dear sir," said my minister, warmly, and with 
tears brimming his eyes, " this is a beautiful dream of 
yours. I say it from my heart, I would gladly see it 
realized ; but there are so many prejudices to over- 
come — there are such different modes of thought and 
worship — I do not see how we could come harmoni- 
ously together." 

" Ah ! but, Mr. Dunn, I have only spoken on the 
supposition that all prejudices had been subordinated 
— all partisan feelings and non-essential opinions — to 
the Christian enterprise. I have only suggested such 
a management of the Lord's business as I should insist 
upon if it were mine ; and I repeat what I have said, 
m effect, before, that if, in the enterprise, which I had 
supposed my own, I should find three or four offices in 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 323 

opposition to each other, in any form, carried on by as 
many agents, each claiming the preference, with no es- 
sential reason for difference, I should conclude that 
they cared more for themselves and their opinions 
than they did for my business. In the method of re- 
form which I have suggested, I would liberate and 
render available a vast amount of idle capital, and I 
should find upon my hands a large corps of agents to 
be sent into such portions of the field as might be un 
supplied. I would also divert the large annual outlay 
which it has cost to support these superfluous institu- 
tions into the maintenance of the new efforts incident 
to their transplantation." 

" This looks rational, however impracticable it may 
be," responded Mr. Dunn, half doubtfully. "But is 
this your whole plan ? " 

"Hardly the shell of it, Mr. Dunn. Are you 
weary ? " 

" Bless you, no ! " replied my minister, pressing my 
hand. " I was only going to remark, that there would 
still be men wanting." 

" Very well," I replied. " I thank you for leading 
me to this point. Every year the religious press breathes 
out the stereotyped lamentation that only a few young 
men, comparatively with the wants of the world, are 
graduated at the theological seminaries. While young 
men by tens of thousands throng every avenue of trade, 



324 Gold-Foil. 



and press into every alley that leads to an avenue, and 
while the professions of law and medicine are crowded 
with the ambitious and the talented, few adopt the no- 
blest calling of all, and the Christian enterprise lags for 
lack of public laborers. Now I have yet to see the 
first branch of business in this country, or in any coun- 
try, that cannot command as many men as it will pay 
for. I tell jou that for money I can obtain men for 
any service under heaven — any service that I would 
engage in — good, Christian men, too. Money will 
send men into the eternal ice of the poles, under the 
fires of the equator, across snow-crowned mountains, 
and among savage beasts and savage men. What, by 
the way, is the amount of your salary, Mr. Dunn ? " 

" Eight hundred dollars a year." 

" That is more than any other minister in this town 
enjoys, and it is just half the sum I pay my head-clerk. 
Now, be kind enough to tell me what is expected of a 
minister." 

I had touched the right chord, and my minister 
rose to his feet, and gave it to me, "with an unc- 
tion." 

" It is required of a minister," said he, " that he 
shall possess a first-class mind ; that he shall spend ten 
of the best years of his life in that crucifixion of the 
flesh which efficient study necessitates ; that, if poor, 
he shall carry into his field of labor a load of debt 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 325 

which will gall his shoulders for years ; that he shall 
withhold himself from all other callings and all side 
schemes and sources of profit ; that he shall write from 
two to three sermons each week, and preach them ; 
that between Sabbath and Sabbath he shall attend two 
or three evening meetings ; that he shall visit every 
family in his parish once in six months ; that he shall 
take the laboring oar in all public charities ; that he 
shall call upon the sick, and look after strangers, and 
officiate at funerals, and serve as a member of the 
school committee, and deliver one or two lectures be- 
fore the village Lyceum every season, and visit the sew- 
ing-circle, through the winter — and — " 

" And all," I continued, rising also to my feet, for 
a sense of injustice was getting the better of me, " and 
all for a sum at which a modern railroad conductor 
would snap his fingers in contempt." 

But Mr. Dunn was at home in this matter, and I was 
very glad to let him talk for me. 

" I will not amend your conclusion of my sentence," 
said my minister, smiling, " though it is not exactly in 
my style. I will say, however, that a minister's salary 
is usually adjusted to the lowest current cost of living. 
In this way, he is allowed to lay up nothing for paying 
oft" his debts, furnishing his house, stocking and replen- 
ishing his library, educating his children, and surround- 
ing himself with the convenient and graceful externals 



326 Gold-Foil. 



of cultivated life. The pastor, enfeebled as he is by 
care and the preparatory studies through which he has 
passed, is required to be the hardest drudge in his 
parish. He is accepted as a laborer in the most im- 
portant calling that honors our poor humanity, he is 
loaded with responsibilities which call for more than 
human strength for their support, yet his scanty stipend 
is doled out to him more as if he were a dirty beggar, 
than a messenger from heaven, and the almoner of its 
choicest gifts." 

Thus having honestly poured out his heart and his 
convictions, my minister sat down. I resumed my seat 
also, and, as I did so, I said, " Mr. Dunn, is it to be 
wondered at that so few men can be found who are 
willing to enter upon a life like this ? " 

" But, my dear sir, there are higher considerations," 
said he, hastily recalling himself. " I declare it to be 
the highest evidence I have known of the benignly con- 
straining power of Christianity, that so many men can 
be found who are willing to leave the brilliant paths — 
open to all — of honor, w T ealth, and fame — to leave them 
with the dew of youth upon their brows, and their 
hearts bounding with the strong pulses of young man- 
hood, and take this dusty road, parched with penury, 
thick strewn with the thorns of ingratitude, and 
thronged with humiliations, from the valley where it 
diverges from the world's great track, to the heaven* 



The Lord's Bufincfs. 327 

touched hill where the weary feet strike upon the 
grateful, golden pavement." 

" You are right, entirely right," I responded ; " and 
now I wish to say to you that I consider the Church, 
in its business capacity, an unjust and grinding master 
towards those whom it has called into its service. Its 
noble colporteurs are not paid as well as hod-carriers, 
and you have told me feelingly how well its pastors are 
paid. And I say that, in a business point of view, the 
lamentation over the small supply of pastors in prepara- 
tion is childish and contemptible, so long as the com- 
monest business principles are disregarded in the en- 
deavor to secure a larger supply. You speak of higher 
considerations. I grant that there are such considera- 
tions, for I have evidence of them in the fact that there 
are any ministers at all. But what have a church and 
religious society to do with those considerations in hir- 
ing a minister ? If they find their candidate an edu- 
cated, sound, spirited, honest, and devoted man, they 
accept him, and enter into a business relation with him. 
Thay are a laboring, producing, trading congregation, 
with all the avenues of wealth opened to them. They 
have no right to ask him to give them one cent. In the 
salary they give him, it is their duty to yield him a full 
share in their prosperity. Any thing less than this makes 
him a menial, and does him injustice. Now it may be 
that ministers do not care about money, but I have no- 



328 Gold-Foil. 



ticed that our few well-paid pulpits never go begging 
for ministers. They are all undoubtedly exercised by 
other considerations, but as the Christian enterprise is 
a common one, the Church has no more right to require 
them to devote to it their life for higher considerations 
than money, than they have to demand money for 
higher considerations than their services. It is an even 
thing." 

"I recognize the intrinsic justice of your position," 
responded my minister, after a pause, " but I am afraid 
money enough could not be found to conduct the 
Christian enterprise in this manner." 

" But money enough is found to manage it badly," 
I replied, "and I believe there is money enough to 
manage it well. I have yet to find the first worldly en- 
terprise that promised safety for investments that did 
not command all the money necessary for its consum- 
mation. Wherever the angels of promise and progress 
lead, money follows and does their bidding. It builds 
magnificent cities, and bridges rivers, and excavates 
canals, and constructs railroads, and levels mountains, 
and equips navies, and furnishes countless hosts with 
the enginery of war. In its ready and prolific power, 
it often furnishes facilities for business before business 
demands them. The Christian world is flooded with 
wealth. There is money enough and to spare, and I 
very decidedly declare, that if, in the subordinate en- 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 329 

terprises of Christian life, there is no lack of money, 
there can be none in the Christian enterprise itself, 
provided, of course, that Christians are sincere in 
their expressions of supreme devotion to that enter- 
prise." 

" A new test of piety," interpolated my min- 
ister. 

" Perhaps so, but I cannot help it ; because, as a 
business man, I know perfectly well that any enterprise 
in which large bodies of men feel a great and absorbing 
interest, can command all the money which it requires. 
And now, when the business world sees the Christian 
world begging for money with which to forward its 
great enterprise, and counting its receipts by slowly ac- 
cumulating thousands, what must be the impression of 
that business world in regard to the honesty and earn- 
estness of that Christian world ? Can it resist the 
quick conclusions of its acutely educated judgment ? 
When it sees a body of men lauding a scheme or enter- 
prise in which they will make no deeper investment 
than they feel obliged to make for decency's sake, it 
calls it contemptuously ' a bogus scheme.' " 

" You have a grain of truth in a bundle of sophis- 
try, here," replied Mr. Dunn. '" It is true, and it is 
not true. The comparison which you institute between 
investments in human enterprises and the Christian en- 
terprise is an illegitimate one." 



330 Gold-Foil. 



"I see where the trouble is," I rejoined. "The 
result of the comparison is the wholesale conviction of 
the Church of the sin of hypocrisy ; but I will relieve 
that of its point by the charitable admission that these 
men are laboring under a hallucination. I believe they 
have entire consciousness of sincerity. Still, from my 
point of view, I can only decide as I have decided. As 
a business man, I know that the Christian world can 
command any amount of money it may be desirable to 
command for the prosecution of the Christian enter- 
prise ; and I can only conclude that, if it fail to do it, 
it is because it has little confidence or little interest in 
it." 

" But do you comprehend the severity of this judg- 
ment ? " inquired Mr. Dunn, solemnly. 

" I do, sir, but I am not responsible for it. I cannot 
help it. You come to business men for money. Why 
should we help you to a penny, when you will not in- 
vest in your schemes yourselves ? You remember how 
it was when our bank was chartered. We opened the 
subscription-books, and the stock was all taken in two 
hours. We believed in our own scheme ; but you pro- 
fess to regard religion as something better than money ; 
you even admit that pastors should labor for higher 
considerations than money ; and yet, when a subscrip- 
tion-book is opened for the advancement of some special 
interest of the Christian enterprise, Christians almost 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 331 

universally play shy of it, and oblige it to go painfully 
and pitifully begging for months." 

As I concluded, my minister heaved a deep sigh. I 
feared he was becoming tired of the interview, and ex- 
pressed the fear to him. He begged me to go on, how- 
ever, and declared that his interest in my conversation 
had deepened from the first, although he felt sick and 
sad with the reflections awakened in the latter part of 
the discussion. 

" We will leave the home field, then," I resumed, 
" and change the current. I find that, independent of 
carrying on the Christian enterprise within Christen- 
dom, there is a missionary work — a work of aggression 
upon the domains of heathenism. In this work the 
business department assumes an importance which it 
holds in no other section of the scheme of Christian 
propagandise. The organizations are larger and more 
powerful, heavier amounts of money are entrusted to 
them, and a more complicated system of machinery is 
called into operation. Their operations are two-fold, 
comprising acquisition and diffusion, and rendering 
necessary a double set of machinery — one to collect 
funds, and another to disburse and consume them. 
These organizations cannot be sustained without a con- 
siderable outlay of money, and the amount of money 
contributed for direct use in forwarding the Christian 
enterprise must be reduced by the amount necessary for 



332 Gold-Foil. 



carrying on the machinery of these organizations. This, 
in itself, is right, as every branch of business should be 
made to pay for itself. I find, on examining this mis- 
sionary field, that it is occupied by a large number of 
organizations, all professedly laboring for the same 
object." 

" A blessed object it is, and may they all be pros- 
pered in it ! " interrupted my minister. 

"Amen! say I; and I will say more than this. 
From the nature of the case, the grand end of Chris- 
tian effort is kept more prominently in view in mission- 
ary operations than in any other. Selfishness and par- 
tizanship are more thoroughly subordinated. The work 
is one of measurably pure Christian benevolence. Not 
so much anxiety is felt for the propagation of sectarian 
views as in the home department of Christian labor. 
Accordingly, in some instances, we have a union of 
various organizations for the purpose of saving the ex- 
pense of operating multiplied sets of machinery." 

" You like this, I suppose," said Mr. Dunn. 

"Entirely; and simply because it is the business 
way of doing things. You remember that a short time 
ago a traveller, in passing over the New York Central 
Railroad, from Albany to Buffalo, was obliged to pur- 
chase a long string of tickets, which represented six or 
seven — more or less — railroad corporations. Each had 
its board of officers, its independent set of machinery, 



The Lord's Bufineis. 333 



its separate engines, cars and men. The business of 
these lines was to help the passenger on from Albany 
to Buffalo. Their interest was identical. So business 
men became aware that there was a great waste in the 
management. They therefore agreed to a grand scheme 
of consolidation, by which the whole track should come 
into the ownership of one corporation, and be placed 
under one board of management. This was the work 
of business men. Xow these missionary corporations 
are the managers of roads that lead from earth to 
heaven ; and, unlike the old railroad corporations, they 
keep up (to speak it reverently) entire routes of transit 
from one extreme to the other. In this thing, all 
Christians feel that it is of more importance that a hea- 
then should come to a practical knowledge of the 
Christian life, than that that life should be accom- 
panied by any special sectarian views. What I wish to 
say, as a business man, is, that not a cent of money 
should be wasted in superfluous organizations and ma- 
chinery, and that ail these men who are carrying on 
this superfluous machinery should be put directly into 
the aggressive field of operations, where men are so 
much wanted/ 5 

"I agree with you in the main, my friend," said 
Mr. Dunn, drawing a long breath. 

" Yet I only advise in the home field the policy which 
you approve in the foreign.' 



334 Gold-Foil. 



" I know," replied my minister, " but you do not 
comprehend all the difficulties." 

" Who made the difficulties ? " 

"Let us not go back to that," said Mr, Dunn, 
smiling. 

" Very well, I will go on. We have, scattered here 
and there, over the land, petty societies, established 
for the accomplishment of some minor, special ends. 
There are some of these which must use nearly or quite 
all the funds they receive in sustaining themselves. 
Their agents occupy our pulpits, they haunt our houses ; 
and as we do not know them, or the organizations 
which they represent, Ave regard it as a hardship to be- 
stow our charities upon them. Speaking in a business 
way, a hat is a hat, and a human soul is a human soul, 
wherever found. If I have money to give for the bene- 
fit of a human soul, I choose to give it where it will tell 
directly upon that soul, and not to a man who will keep 
half of the sum to pay himself for getting it out of me. 
In other words, I would support that man as a mission- 
ary, and thus give the heathen the benefit of his time 
and my money, rather than deprive the heathen en- 
tirely of the one and half of the other." 

"Then you wxmld kill all these societies, would 
you ? " 

" I would do this : I would place the best business 
men at the head of our leading charities, and then, if 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 



335 



they should fail to find these minor fields of sufficient 
promise to warrant an outlay in their behalf, I should 
advise that they remain uncultivated " 

" But I do not see," said my minister, " how you 
will avoid the necessity of keeping up a full corps of 
collectors. Every church must be approached with 
explanations and solicitations." 

"Yes, but not necessarily by professional collectors. 
If Christians really feel the interest which they profess 
to feel in missionary operations, they will need no ex- 
planations — no annual posting up in missionary matters. 
A business man needs no such annual posting up in 
financial affairs. He reads the foreign news, the price- 
current, the daily condition of the money-market, and 
every thing which directly or indirectly bears upon his 
business. The Christian world has its " Missionary 
Herald," and other publications, in which all the facts 
are stated weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Any man 
really interested in this enterprise, as every Christian 
professes to be, would of course read these publications 
with anxious avidity. The pastor does, at least ; and 
I should greatly prefer, Mr. Dunn, to hear a missionary 
sermon from you, than the tedious harangue of a 
stranger. At any rate, if the church is really interested 
in the missionary work, it will gladly assume the task 
of collecting its own funds, and thus turn into the di- 
rect channel of Christian effort the money now ex* 



336 Gold-Foil. 



pended in supporting collectors, and, with it, the col- 
lectors themselves." 

Here Mr. Dunn took out his watch. 

" Mr. Dunn, I accept the hint. I have bored you." 

" Not at all, sir," replied the good-natured man. 
" I assure you that the act was involuntary. Go on." 

" I think," said I, resuming, " that there are but two 
points more which I care about touching to-night. We 
business men think a great deal of business honor. In 
the business world, a man who refuses to pay his just 
debts is accounted no better than a swindler. All con- 
fidence is withdrawn from him, and all business accom- 
modations are refused to him wherever he is known. 
It was only last Sabbath that you gave out a hymn 
which had in it this noble stanza : — 

* Were the whole realm of nature mine, 

That were an offering far too small ; 
Love so amazing, so divine, 
Demands my soul, my life, my all.' 

I noticed several eyes around me grow moist with its 
effect. I have no doubt that the whole church looked 
upon it as an eloquent expression of their indebtedness 
to their great Master. They mentally credited Heaven 
with an infinite benefit, and debited themselves with 
their entire spiritual, vital, and worldly estate. Now 
I, as a business man, see that the Christian acknowl- 
edges the receipt of this benefit, and in his covenant, or 



The Lord's Bufmefs. 337 

contract, agrees to make the utmost payment in his 
power. Mr. Dunn, you know I mean no irreverence 
when I say that the church has not treated Jesus Christ 
with any thing like the business punctilio which it ex- 
ercises towards and exacts of its neighbors, and that, 
if Jesus Christ were the manager of a bank, every 
obligation the members have given would have passed 
to protest long ago. I do not pretend to canvass 
moral obligations, and I will only add, that when the 
Christian enterprise shall receive all the men and all the 
money pledged to it by contract, when Christians shall 
discharge their plain business obligations, voluntarily 
assumed, and long over-due, there will be no lack of 
agents or of means for carrying the Christian enterprise 
to the grand consummation which awaits it." 

" This is a new view," said my minister, with en- 
thusiasm, " and should be urged from the pulpit. It 
must be effective." 

" You are welcome to it," I replied. 

" And is my lesson concluded ? " 

" Not quite. I wish to add that business men, in 
their steady look-out for the main chance, are always 
on the alert for any incidental or side schemes of profit 
or advantage that may present themselves. In the 
Christian enterprise, or among its results, there is such 
a thing recognized as Christian brotherhood. It ought 
to be the best and purest relation which can exist be* 
15 



338 



Gold-Foil. 



tween man and man, and, if fully realized, certain ma- 
terial benefits would be sure to result from it." 

" What, for instance ? " 

" Well, you know that, for the purpose of securing 
benefits that would naturally flow from a genuine 
Christian brotherhood, various special organizations 
have been established, such as the Free Masons and 
the Odd Fellows. Suppose I were in New Orleans, or 
London, and should fall sick. Suppose, also, that I 
were a member of your church, and also a Mason. 
Should I call upon a member of the church first, in 
order to secure care and aid ? " 

My minister blushed, and did not reply. 

" You know I should not. Now I say that there 
is a very large class of minds which judge of the sound- 
ness of a principle by the character of the action it 
inspires. To such a class as this, which organization — 
the church or the lodge — would seem to possess within 
it the most powerful principle of practical fraternity ? " 

" But, my dear sir," said Mr. Dunn, warmly, " these 
societies have nothing good in them that they did not 
take from Christianity." 

" That is it exactly. They have stolen your capi- 
tal. As a business man, I say that Christianity cannot 
afford to render necessary or desirable a set of organ- 
izations which tend to throw it into disrepute, by doing 
the work which it is the duty of the church to do. 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 339 

Were I to undertake a large business, and attempt to 
manage it in all its details, and so far fail in one of them 
that another should spring up, and take it out of my 
hands, and execute it better than I had ever executed 
it, I should not only feel personally humiliated, but I 
should feel that my whole business had been wounded. 
I say, then, that the prosecutors of the Christian enter- 
prise cannot afford to be surpassed by any other organ- 
ization in the practical results which flow from the 
brotherhood it establishes. And now, if you will allow 
me to finish at a breath, I will add that this same 
business view of brotherhoods applies with equal force 
to all the organizations formed to do the work which 
the church neglects to do. Various societies of re- 
form that have sprung up in the past have found their 
birth in the quick sensibilities of men who have had no 
connection with the church, and who, in carrying them 
forward, have met with so much immobility in, or abso- 
lute opposition from, the church, that they have be- 
come impatient and disgusted, so far, in some instances, 
as to become open enemies of the church, and even of 
the Bible itself. I say that the Christian enterprise 
cannot afford this. Every good principle or purpose 
which is involved in these side-schemes is taken from 
Christianity ; but Christianity, while furnishing capital 
for these schemes, loses not only the capital, but the 
credit of using it, and often has the misfortune to see 



340 Gold-Foil. 



its thankless beneficiaries turning against it. I say 
such management as this is ruinous." 

" Management, management, management ! " ex- 
claimed Mr. Dunn, rising to his feet, and taking his hat 
from the table — " nothing but management." 

" My good sir, what do you mean ? " 

"I mean this, that your constant association of 
management with the Christian enterprise is repugnant 
to my ideas of the nature of that enterprise. The 
Christian enterprise is heaven-born. It has inherent, 
irresistible strength, and God is with it ! It must win 
its way, if its facts and its principles be proclaimed ; and 
because that in it are the wisdom and the power of 
God, it does not need the aid of such small manage- 
ment as we apply to our business affairs — still less the 
aid of that power which the cunning tactician employs 
in other and less worthy fields of operation." 

" I honor the sensitiveness and sensibility in which 
your words originate," I replied; "but I join issue with 
you. There is nothing more dangerous to any enter- 
prise than an overweening confidence in its strength. 
Now, my good sir, against a good cause, interest, lust, 
and malice manage, and when they crush it, as they 
have crushed many good causes, they crush it by man- 
agement. They cannot oppose it on its own merits, 
and they therefore avoid its issues. But all the power 
which a good cause possesses within itself resides in its 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 341 

issues. If its opponents be not brought to meet these, 
it is powerless. Here is where management becomes 
necessary to meet management, and the nature of the 
cause and the nature of the opposition will determine 
the nature of the management." 

"But this has nothing to do with business — we 
were talking of business management." 

"I am coming to that. The strictly business man- 
agement stands upon a different basis. No matter how 
good or how strong a cause may be, the scheme of its 
propagation necessarily has its business department, 
which, being independent of the cause itself, in the fact 
that it is incident to all organized human action, must 
be conducted on business principles. I therefore say 
that there is nothing more dangerous to a cause than 
that degree of confidence in its strength which makes 
it responsible for more power than resides in its issues, 
and leads to the abandonment of departments of labor 
essential to its success — departments only legitimately 
to be operated by human sagacity and human pru- 
dence." 

As I closed my last sentence, the clock struck nine. 
I felt ashamed for having detained my good friend so 
long, and apologized, not only for this but for the al- 
most disrespectful act of calling him to me. He said 
that no apology was needed, that I had given him food 
for thought for many days, and that I must not be sur- 



342 Gold-Foil. 



prised to see a portion of my thoughts reproduced in 
the pulpit, with such modifications as reflection might 
suggest. I helped him on with his over-coat, and he 
left the door in a brown study. 

About three weeks afterwards he called upon me, 
and desired me to remain at home on the approaching 
Sabbath morning, as he should use so many of my 
thoughts in his discourse that it would embarrass him 
to have me present. I acceded to the request, on the 
condition that he would give me his sermon to peruse 
after its delivery. This he agreed to, and the arrange- 
ment was fulfilled in all its parts. 

The sacred text upon which he founded his dis- 
course was this : " For the children of this world are 
wiser in their generation than the children of light." 
It was an eloquent performance. All my views had 
been modified somewhat, by passing through the me- 
dium of a more spiritual mind : but they had not been 
shorn of their power. The closing paragraphs im- 
pressed me as powerful and eloquent, and I trust that 
their author will take no offence at my purloining them 
and publishing them here. 

" I see the Christian enterprise only feebly aggres- 
sive, pushing on laboriously here and there, and count- 
ing its gains slowly, while the great worldly enterprises 
among which it floats dash proudly before the wind 
with sails all set, until they ride, staunch and trim, in 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 343 

the harbors for which their owners destined them. 
Think you that in a world of business like this any 
enterprise can succeed that is not managed in a busi- 
ness manner ? Why should the children of this world 
be wiser in their generation than the children of light ? 
Why will the latter vainly call upon God to work mira- 
cles in their behalf, while refusing to apply to the Chris- 
tian enterprise those simple, common-sense rules of 
policy and action, without which (they well know) 
their own business would fall into irretrievable ruin ? 
What sight more pitiable can there be, than a band of 
mistaken Christians, praying Heaven for help in favor 
of a cause the laws of w r hose progress they utterly ig- 
nore or positively transgress ? 

" Incidentally our discussion has touched something 
deeper than this. Heaven has chosen the w T eak things 
of this world to confound the things which are mighty; 
and the business test which we have applied to the 
Christian enterprise, and its managers and manage* 
ment, low and subordinate as it is, has reached down 
into the great Christian heart, and tried its sincerity. 
It has shown plainly, if it has shown any thing, that the 
real nature of the claims of Christianity is but feebly 
realized by its professors. It has shown that Christians 
are repudiators of their acknowledged debts, and that 
behind all this business delinquency and dishonor there 
must be a torpor of moral sensibility and a lack of 



344 Gold-Foil. 



moral honesty, sufficient, but for the upholding arm of 
a pitying Heaven, to crush the Christian enterprise into 
the dust. 

" As I look out upon the field of Christian labor 1 
see nothing harder to accomplish than what has been 
accomplished already. There is not a difficulty there 
which, in the progress of the enterprise, has not been 
many times surmounted. The entire practicability of 
the Christian enterprise has been demonstrated by the 
work already done. The Christianization of mind is 
not a more difficult process now, than it has been in 
the past. If, therefore, the great difficulties in the 
path of the Christian enterprise do not exist in the field 
through which it passes, w^here do they exist, where 
can they exist, save among those who are carrying 
it on? 

c * I feel oppressed and humiliated by the secondary 
position which the great enterprise to which I have de- 
voted myself is allowed to occupy among the teeming 
enterprises of the world. I am ashamed that there is 
no mora practical sagacity manifested in its manage- 
ment, and that even the readiness and freeness of the 
grace of God are called in question to account for a 
barren adversity of results, for which the Christian 
world is alone responsible. 

c; Every interest of man calls for the efficient prose- 
cution of this enterprise and its speediest completion. 



The Lord's Bufinefs. 345 

The moral and intellectual health and the redemption 
of a race are involved in it. Whatever of blessing 
there may be in wealth, whatever of honor and purity 
there may be in politics, whatever of sweetness ther 
may be in family and social relations, whatever of worth 
there may be in manhood and womanhood, whatever 
of dignity and true joy there may be in worldly pur- 
suits, whatever of glory there may be in the wide 
range of human action, depends upon results which 
this enterprise shall achieve for mankind. It should be 
broad, instinct with action, heaven-reflecting, and world- 
embracing like the sea. Upon its billowy bosom the 
navies of all lands should ride. The keel of every hu- 
man enterprise should be sunk deep in its waters, and 
every sail should be filled fully and steadily by the be- 
nign breezes that sweep over its surface. It should 
only break against great continents of Christian life or 
islands of human happiness, kissing their feet in the 
tidal throb of its heaven-born impulse, tempering the 
fervors of Prosperity's summer, meliorating the rigors 
of Adversity's winter, and binding the nations in peace- 
ful communion through the medium of its flexible and 
universal element. The world cannot live without this 
enterprise. Wherever upon its surface a true civiliza- 
tion has lifted its head above the dead level of bar- 
barism, there you may trace the footsteps of the Chris- 
tian enterprise. Wherever the divine man has con- 
15* 



346 Gold-Foil. 



quered the brute, there has stood the messenger of 
heavenly truth. 

" What is true in the past will prove true in the 
future. Thus, then, the world's destiny and the world's 
hope are in the Christian enterprise. And how is that 
enterprise managed ? What progress is it making ? 
In this view, how pitiful and contemptible, nay, how 
sinful and damnable, become the strifes of words, the 
wars of sects, the dumb formalities, the droning imbe- 
cilities, the treasure-sacrificing ostentations, and the 
niggardly meannesses of the great mass of those w r ho 
have in charge this heavenly enterprise ! May the day 
soon dawn, when the great object of Christian labor — 
the conversion of the world — shall reconcile all differ- 
ences, unite all hearts and hands, and lead on victori- 
ously to the consummation of a scheme w^hich had its 
birth in the bosom of God's great benevolence, and 
shall find its issue in universal joy ! " 




m m m m m m m m m 21 



XXVIII. 

THE GREAT MYSTERY. 

" Consider well and oft why thou earnest into the world, and how soon thou 
must go out of it." 

" Careless men let their end steal upon them unawares and unprovided." 
" Our birth made us mortal ; our death will make us immortal." 
" He that fears not the future may enjoy the present." 

WHY was I — why were you — called forth from 
nothingness into a world of danger and pain, 
and sin and death ? That is a question that has blis- 
tered the lips of a million wretches, and we who are 
happier, though still the subjects of evil, may well ask 
it, and consider it. 

The earth has been the subject of two grand experi- 
ments, and in the results of these we are to find the 
answer, if anywhere. Six thousand years ago two per- 
sons — a man and a woman — were born into the world, 
and awoke to the consciousness of existence. They 
were pure and good, and so pure and so good that they 



348 Gold-Foil. 



were open to free intercourse with God and with spir- 
itual intelligences. Their tent was the blue sky, the 
floor of their dwelling was carpeted with Eden's grass 
and flowers, and fruits, heaven-provided, hung on every 
hand. They knew no danger, they felt no pain, they 
were free from guilt, and had no fear of death. They 
were adapted to drink in happiness from the things 
around them, and the things around them were adapted 
to supply their desires. A pair of perfect bodies, a 
pair of pure spirits, they found themselves in what 
seemed to be, and was to them, a perfect world. They 
were made in the image of God, and were therefore 
free. This freedom was essential to their perfection, 
their dignity, and that development to which their 
Maker looked as the crowning excellence and glory of 
those whom He would call his children. 

But there could be no such thing as right without 
its opposite — wrong ; and no good without its opposite 
— evil. They were free, and could obey the laws placed 
upon them, and thus perpetuate their happy estate, or 
they could do wrong, and blast it. They yielded to 
the first temptation to do wrong, and found themselves 
and the world transformed. This first experiment con- 
templated the development of humanity into its high- 
est form and noblest quality without the ministry of 
evil. It was a failure, and God, who instituted the 
experiment that we might answer the great question 



The Great Myftery. 349 

we are considering, knew it would be. It was brief, 
terrible, and decisive. The parents and representatives 
of the race were driven out of the garden, and they 
and all their posterity have been subjected to a new 
experiment — a better and a safer one. It was better 
that Adam and Eve should fail then and there, than a 
thousand years afterward. The experiment was tried 
under the most favorable circumstances, and did not 
succeed. That was enough for the world. There had 
been experiments before — how many we know not — 
but we know that there were great beings who had 
failed to keep their first estate, and had done im- 
measurable mischief in the spiritual universe. The 
Bible tells of these. 

The new experiment — that of which all of us are 
the subjects — contemplates the introduction of the race 
into its highest estate through the vestibule of evil. 
We are to take evil at this end, and not at the other. 
We are to become familiar with sin and its effects, to 
overpower temptation, to become "perfect through 
suffering." We are to win strength by struggle, and 
to have our love of that which is good developed side 
by side with our hatred of that which is bad. Our 
spiritual natures are to be knit into firmness by toil, to 
be hardened into power by conflict, to be softened into 
humility by the experience of their weakness, to be 
rendered tractable by affliction, and thus fitted for a 



350 Gold-Foil. 



safe eternity. What do you say of this experiment ? 
Is it not a grand one ? Is it not a benevolent one ? 
Tell me not of the millions who fail of this ! I leave 
them in the hands of that benevolence that has devised 
such great things for you and for me. That this is the 
exact motive of the experiment now in progress in this 
world, I have no doubt ; and I do not believe, consid- 
ering the length of time it has been persevered in, and 
the nature of the agencies that have been introduced, 
that it will prove to be a failure. If I did, I should 
lose all faith in God. I believe that the world, as it is 
— considering the nature and duration of our existence 
and the nature of ourselves and the service and society 
for which we are designed — is the best and safest world 
we could be placed in. There I leave it. 

Well, is this existence, which I have entered upon 
by no act of my own, on the whole a blessing ? Do 
you feel it to be so to you, or not ? How would you 
like to be annihilated — to be wiped out as a conscious 
existence, and plunged into the dark nothingness from 
whence you came ? You shrink from the thought, and 
so do I. v Why ? Because, and only because, we be- 
lieve, with all healthy souls, that existence is a blessing. 
We love life, here and now, in this world of sickness, 
sorrow, and death. If, then, existence be a blessing, 
little or large, to us, and we were born into a world of 
suffering and of sin for the purpose of fitting us to live 



The Great Myftery. 351 

safely and securely through all the coming ages of our 
existence, certainly it becomes us to take it contented- 
ly, to front our destiny boldly and trustfully, and see 
what we can make of it. We are to consider not only 
why we came into existence in such a world as this, but 
how soon we must go out of it, and how brief, at 
longest, the period of this momentous experiment 
will be. 

If this world be not a place for education of some 
sort, it has little meaning. The idea that a man should 
be placed in the circumstances that surround us, and 
subjected to this great experiment without reference to 
another existence — that he should die as soon as he has 
learned to live — is simply absurd. Admitting, then, 
that we are the subjects of education, how does it be- 
come us to see that the end of its period do not steal 
upon us unawares and unprovided. How does it be- 
come us, as rational men and women, to make the most 
of our life, and to see that in our case, at least, the ex- 
periment be successful. The man who receives life as a 
blessing, to be cherished and loved, and enjoyed and 
preserved, is a coward if he be afraid to consider its 
intention and its end, and a guilty spendthrift if 
he let it pass by, month after month and year after 
year, without securing the education it was meant to 
convey. 

This wise providence of time and opportunity be- 



352 Gold-Foil. 



comes the more desirable when it is remembered that 
it is only when we are fearless of the future that we 
may enjoy the present. The lamb doomed to slaughter 
on the morrow, gambols and rejoices in freedom to-day, 
because it is fearless of the future. The bird sings, the 
insect hums with the joy that is in it, the kitten frisks 
upon the carpet, not because they are not subjects of pain 
and death, but because, knowing nothing of them, they 
have no fear of them. A fearlessness of the future 
identical with this cannot be ours, and the fact is proof 
of our higher destiny ; but a fearlessness of the future, 
which will render our life far happier than theirs, may 
be acquired, by preparation to meet the future. Life 
is only an inestimable blessing to him who, prepared to 
meet the future, and who, comprehending his position 
and the meaning of it, is not afraid of the future. 

The shadowy future — ah ! how many shudder when 
they think of it ! How many shrink from even the 
thought of it ! How it poisons every present delight, 
and embitters every pleasure, and haunts every hour of 
hollow mirth ! I declare this to be utterly unneces- 
sary — even inexcusable. We are content to live here 
in this world of sorrow and pain, and shrink from a 
world in which it shall be done away with, if we are 
only manly enough to get ready for it ! Accepting our 
life as an experiment — a period of education — entering 
into the plan by which we are to be fitted for everlast- 



The Great Myflery. 353 



ing happiness and safety, and subjecting ourselves to 
the necessary discipline — we lift the great shadow from 
us ; the phantom of the future retires, and, calm in our 
trust, we live in the present a life of enjoyment. No 
man can enjoy life in its full, blessed measure, until this 
tormenting fear be cast out ; and it can never be cast 
out by a rational man until the future looks safe to him. 
The moment the future is taken care of, present trials 
seem small, and present joys are lifted to our lips, their 
divine aroma unalloyed. 

The tendency of religious instruction and of phil- 
osophical speculation has been to mystify us all upon 
this problem of evil in the world. Our preachers have 
talked solemnly upon the subject of "reconciling" the 
existence of evil with the, infinite love and goodness of 
God, as if the belief in this goodness and the recogni- 
tion of this evil in the ordained system of things, were 
to be regarded separately, with an unbridged gulf of 
darkness between them. Threading that darkness, 
fathoms below sight, there is supposed to be a chain of 
golden links, holding one to the other, to be appre- 
hended only by an irrational faith. Such teaching and 
such speculation are full of miserable infidelity. I, for 
one, believe in the infinite love and goodness of God. 
I plant myself on them, and I believe that I could not 
be shaken from my foothold without the wish that I 
might plunge into annihilation. On this firm rock I 



354 Gold-Foil. 



take my stand, and, without seeking to reconcile the 
evil which enters into my experience and comes within 
my observation with God's love and goodness, I seek 
rationally to account for the evil as an appointed means 
of the infinite love and goodness. I know God is good, 
or He is no God ; and I believe, as a natural conse- 
quence, that I am to be raised into assimilation with 
the specific quality of His goodness by rational knowl- 
edge of, and experimental acquaintance Avith, evil. I 
call that infidelity, and not faith, which makes of the 
existence of evil a blind mystery, to be mournfully aa 
cepted, and sacredly kept from the hand and eye of 
reason. It makes no difference what events and what 
destinies hinge upon the existence of evil here ; it mat- 
ters nothing what sufferings, what woes, what sorrows 
assail us ; the moment we swing loose, by the smallest 
remove, from perfect trust in the infinite love and good- 
ness, and a belief in the benign ministry of evil as a 
department of their means, we lose our hold upon the 
meaning of our life. 

Believing in God's goodness and His infinite and 
everlasting love, I believe in evil, as a part of the di- 
vinely appointed means by which my soul is to be 
educated and disciplined for its highest possible des- 
tiny — as a means rendered necessary by my nature and 
by my destiny. I believe that if now, in my soul's in- 
fancy, I make my acquaintance with evil, and grow up 



The Great Myftery. 355 

through it into my soul's manhood — learning its rela- 
tions to divine law and to my own personal, godlike 
freedom — that I shall be safe through the infinite ages 
that stretch before me. I shall not be like the angels 
who lost their first estate, and plunged, full-fledged, 
from heights of heavenly power into an infamous per- 
dition. God might as well have given me my infancy 
in heaven as here, if evil had no ministry of good for 
me. I might as well have been ushered at once into 
the spiritual life, as to have been the tenant of a 
death-doomed body, if there had been nothing to 
be gained by probationary subjection to the power of 
evil. 

So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand 
advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest 
happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that in- 
finite love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, 
tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will 
take care of it. I say nothing here of the Christian 
scheme, because I choose to discuss this single question 
by itself. 

Now, what I wish to say, is this : that a man who 
decides that God is infinitely good, that he was born 
into a world of evil because it was on the whole best 
for him to be born into such a world, that evil has a 
ministry for him essential in the nature of things to his 
highest destiny and his completest safety, and, with 



356 Gold-Foil. 



faith and confidence, accepts his lot and makes the most 
of it, has nothing to fear in the future, and nothing to 
hinder his enjoyment of the present. From such a 
man the incubus of a dark future is lifted. The future 
may be undefined and, perhaps, in some sense, awful, 
but it will not be terrible ; for infinite love will take 
care of it. The terror inspired by things to come 
thus taken out of the way, the ban on present happi- 
ness is removed, and soul and sense may drink in un- 
reproved, whatever good that crowds to them for ac- 
ceptance* 

If we, finite creatures, encumbered with flesh, and 
harassed by its appetites and gross proclivities, con- 
quer the temptations that assail us, and find ourselves 
growing stronger and better as we grow older ; if, in 
this world of evil, and in a measure through its minis- 
try, we become elevated and ennobled, how safe and 
glorious must that future be which shall find us free 
from the appetites that chafe us, and released from all 
pain and sorrow ! Now, is it not worth something to 
make that future so secure that we can approach it 
with fearlessness ? Ah yes ! The life which is, no less 
than the life which is to come, is ours, if we will take it. 
With this lion in our way removed, how sweetly will 
taste the pleasures of life ! How precious will become 
the loves that our hearts drink so greedily, and often so 
fearfully, when we know that we may drink them for- 



The Great Myftery. 357 



ever ! How charming will become the songs of birds, 
and how fragrant the perfume of flowers, to him who 
believes that he will only lose them to listen to angelic 
music, and breathe the breath of flowers that never 
decay ! 

Much of the mystery that hangs over the world, as 
a world of evil, grows out of a misconception of the 
highest life. If the highest good of the short years 
that are allotted to us on the earth be happiness, then 
is the existence of evil indeed a mystery ; but it is not* 
and cannot be. Happiness is a legitimate object of 
life, and I am even now endeavoring to show how more 
of it may be secured; but it is an object to be held 
subordinate to the education necessary for service in 
another realm, and the permanent enjoyment of another 
estate. I believe that the truest happiness of the world 
is to be found in heartily accepting and entering into 
the scheme by which evil is made a powerful agency 
in the development and eternal security of the soul. 
Accepting this ministry, and trusting in the good- 
ness — profound and eternal — in which it was con- 
ceived, what a flood of light and love is let in upon the 
soul ! Xo ! there is something better for us in this 
world than happiness, whatever there may be beyond. 
We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly 
and gratefully. We will add a thousand-fold to the 
happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the fu- 



358 Gold-Foil. 



ture which it brings, but we will not place happiness 
firsthand thus cloud our heads with doubt and fill 
our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils grow 
the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest treec 
spring heavenward among the rocks. 



THE END. 



